John  Kirk  Semple 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


SUPERS  AND  SUPERMEN 

STUDIES     IN      POLITICS. 
HISTORY  AND  LETTERS 


SUPERS  &  SUPERMEN 

STUDIES     IN      POLITICS, 
HISTORY  AND   LETTERS 


BY 

PHILIP    GUEDALLA 


NEW  YORK 

ALFRED    A.    KNOPF    (Inc) 

220  WEST  FORTY-SECOND  ST. 
1921 


{All  rights  reserved) 

PRINTED  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN 


To  1- 


N.   OR  M. 

BUT 

IN    EITHER    CASE 

TO 

MY    WIFE 


CONTENTS 

SUPERS 

PAGB 

SOME    FOREIGN    SECRETARIES 11 

SOME    HISTORIANS 20 

SOME    STRATEGISTS 31 

SOME    CRITICS 39 

SOME    FRENCHMEN 47 

SOME    MORE    FRENCHMEN 55 

SOME    ZIONISTS 63 

SOME    GERMANS 70 

SOME    ROMANS 78 

SOME    LITERARY    MEN 84 

SOME    TURKS 90 

SOME    SERBS 98 

SOME    PEERS 103 

SOME    LAWYERS 121 

SOME    REVOLUTIONARIES 125 

AN    AMERICAN 129 

SUPERMEN 

I.  GENTLEMEN  ADVENTURERS 

KING    FREDERICK    THE    GREAT 135 

KING    LOUIS    PHILIPPE 149 

MR.    DISRAELI,    STATESMAN 155 

MR.    DISRAELI,    NOVELIST 166 

7 


8  CONTENTS 

FAOB 

MR.    DISRAELI,    JOURNALIST 171 

MR.    DELANE 176 

M.  ADOLPHE  THIERS 181 

M.  LEON  GAMBETTA 186 

GENERAL  WALKER 194 

SUPERMEN 

II.    PRIMITIVES 

KING    ALFRED 203 

KING    JOHN 208 

KING    HAL 212 

LADY    HAMILTON 217 

HERR    V.    TREITSCHKE 220 

MR.    WILFRID    BLUNT 227 

IN   MEMORIAM 

LORD    KITCHENER 233 

MONS — GALLIPOLI 240 

RONALD    POULTON      248 


[NOTE. — Thanks  are  due  to  the  Editors  of  the  New 
Statesman,  Athenojum,  Daily  News,  Observer,  and 
Sunday  Chronicle  for  per  mission  to  make  use  of  material 
which  originally  appeared  in  their  columns. — P.  G.] 


SUPERS 

SOME   FOREIGN   SECRETARIES 

SOME   HISTORIANS 

SOME    STRATEGISTS 

SOME   CRITICS 

SOME  FRENCHMEN 

SOME  MORE  FRENCHMEN 

SOME   ZIONISTS 

SOME   GERMANS 

SOME   ROMANS 

SOME   LITERARY    MEN 

SOME   TURKS 

SOME   SERBS 

SOME   PEERS — 

I.    LORD   RUSSELL 
II.    LORD   WELLESLEY 

III.  LORD    NORTH 

IV.  LORDS   LYONS   AND   CLARENDON 
SOME   LAWYERS 

SOME   REVOLUTIONARIES 
AN   AMERICAN 


SOME    FOREIGN    SECRETARIES 

WHISPERING  from  its  towers  the  last  en- 
chantment of  the  middle-class,  the  Foreign 
Office  occupies  an  eligible  central  situation 
between  Whitehall  and  St.  James's  Park.  The 
grateful  taxpayer  provides  it  with  an  abundance 
of  admirable  stationery,  and  it  is  perhaps  the 
last  place  in  London  where  everybody  is  a  gentle- 
man. Possibly  that  is  why  it  is  deficient  in  repartee 
and  finds  its  strength,  like  the  well-bred  heroes 
of  Mr.  Seton  Merriman,  in  silence.  It  is,  like  that 
other  cause  of  revolutions,  the  States-General 
of  1789,  an  interesting  but  neglected  antiquity, 
hovering  uncertainly  between  an  uncomfortable 
club  for  elderly  bachelors  and  an  academy  for 
the  sons  of  gentlemen  (for  at  least  one  grand- 
father is  the  legal  minimum).  Behind  the  solid 
joinery  of  its  doors,  and  above  the  royal  ciphers 
upon  its  hearth-rugs,  the  public  acts  of  the  United 
Kingdom  lie  in  the  hands  of  fifty  persons  and  at 
the  mercy  of  about  five. 

The  Foreign  Office,  as  Lord  Avebury  must 
have  said  of  Stonehenge,  is  a  remarkable  place. 
For  the  average  Englishman  it  occupies  a  position 
a  little  higher  than  the  Post  Office,  a  little  lower 
than  the  Bank.  But  among  all  the  public  institu- 
tions of  Great  Britain  it  has  impressed  the  Con- 
tinent.    It  has  impressed  it  almost  as  profoundly 

11 


12  SUPERS 


as  the  Lord-Mayoralty  and  the  sale  of  wives  at 
Smithfield.  An  historian  of  the  Second  Empire, 
whose  election  to  the  French  Academy  did  not 
depend  solely  upon  his  philology,  has  referred 
with  reverence  to  the  subtlety  of  the  Forig  Office 
de  LondreSf  and  his  respect  is  typical  of  its  Euro- 
pean reputation.  The  causes  of  this  sentiment 
are  among  the  most  mysterious  things  in  Europe. 
It  may  be  the  quality  of  its  notepaper  (which  is 
excellent),  since  it  can  hardly  be  the  continuity 
of  its  policy,  which  is  not  continuous. 

Through  the  whole  course  of  history  Great 
Britain  has  consistently  confounded  her  enemies 
by  the  inconsistency  of  her  acts.  Latin  logic 
and  Teutonic  deduction  have  exhausted  the  exac- 
titude of  all  the  systems  in  the  effort  to  forecast 
the  proceedings  of  British  statesmen.  But  there 
is  no  calculation  known  to  man  that  can  discover 
the  next  move  of  England,  since  it  is  never  known 
to  England  itself.  To  this  is  due  the  Puck-like 
quality  of  His  Majesty's  Principal  Secretaries  of 
State.  That  is  the  essence  of  British  policy ; 
it  has  no  golden  rule  except  that  it  has  no  golden 
rule.  It  proceeds  in  no  single  ascertained  direc- 
tion for  ten  years  at  a  time ;  that  is  where  it  gets 
the  better  of  Russian  policy,  which  laboriously 
executed  through  the  nineteenth  century  the  codicils 
of  the  will  of  Peter  the  Great.  It  seeks  no  natural 
frontiers,  because  geography  is  not  taught  in  the 
Public  Schools  ;  that  is  where  it  has  the  advantage 
over  France,  which  is  perpetually  returning,  as 
any  schoolboy  can  see,  to  the  line  of  the  Rhine. 
It  has  no  natural  enmities  comparable  to  the 
rivalry  of  Slav  and  Teuton,  because  the  European 


SOME     FOREIGN     SECRETARIES       13 

Powers  have  been  indifferently  its  allies  and  its 
adversaries.  In  the  result  British  policy  has  re- 
mained the  incalculable  factor  which  does  the 
sum,  whilst  the  movement  of  Russia  towards  the 
Dardanelles,  of  France  towards  the  Rhine,  or  of 
Germany  towards  the  lower  Scheldt  was  patent 
to  anyone  who  could  read  a  line  of  history  or  a 
square  inch  of  a  map.  It  is  a  great  inheritance. 
For  three  centuries  Great  Britain  has  maintained 
the  stupendous  opportunism  of  the  Balance  of 
Power,  facing  the  European  storm  with  a  varia- 
tion of  direction  and  an  accuracy  of  judgment 
which  were  both  borrowed  from  the  weather-cock. 
As  a  national  symbol  that  prescient  and  revolving 
fowl  may  lack  inspiration,  but  it  represents  fairly 
enough  the  starry  ideal  to  which  British  states- 
manship has  hitched  the  waggon  of  British  policy. 
"  It  is  a  narrow  policy  to  suppose  that  this  country 
or  that  is  to  be  marked  out  as  the  eternal  ally 
or  the  perpetual  enemy  of  England.  We  have 
no  eternal  alhes,  and  we  have  no  perpetual 
enemies.  Our  interests  are  eternal  and  per- 
petual, and  those  interests  it  is  our  duty  to 
follow."  The  statement  is  no  less  reliable  because 
it  was  made  by  Lord  Palmerston  following 
a  considered  judgment  of  Mr.  Canning.  If  he 
had  known  French  (an  accomplishment  normally 
confined  to  permanent  officials)  the  noble  lord 
might  have  said  of  his  country's  pohcy :  Pitts 
Qa  change,  plus  c'est  la  meme  chose. 

One  fascinating  result  of  this  constant  variation 
of  direction  is  a  delightful  inconsistency  between 
its  various  exponents.  Right  honourable  gentle- 
men stretch  quivering  forefingers  across  the  des- 


14  SUPERS 


patch  box  towards  the  wrath  to  come,  and  locate 
it  alternately  in  North  and  South  and  East.  Spain, 
Holland,  France,  Russia  and  Germany  have  suc- 
cessively troubled  the  sleep  of  British  Ministers, 
and  it  is  remarkable  that  Austria  is  the  one  country 
in  Europe  that  has  never  provided  England  with 
a  menace.  In  these  circumstances,  it  was  delight- 
fully malicious  of  a  friend  of  Mr.  Lloyd  George  ^ 
to  compile  an  anthology  of  speeches  on  British 
policy.  These  Little  Flowers  of  the  Foreign  Office 
are  so  engagingly  divergent ;  it  is  a  garden  which 
grows,  after  a  celebrated  model,  quite  contrary. 
Any  collection  of  speeches  which  is  largely 
Parliamentary  is  consequently  disfigured  with  the 
wealth  of  unnecessary  parenthesis  which  forms 
the  House  of  Commons  manner.  One  can  never 
forget  that  Robinson  in  his  embarrassed  transit 
through  English  politics  embellished  one  Budget 
speech  with  a  series  of  six  visions  and  a  quotation 
from  Shakespeare  and  ended  another  with  a 
sentence  standing  twenty-seven  lines  long  in  Han- 
sard. Even  Foreign  Secretaries  are  more  reason- 
able when  they  get  to  the  country,  and  the  finest 
speeches  in  the  collection  are  those  delivered  to 
popular  audiences.  It  is  a  most  useful  and  in- 
structive garner  :  it  might  perhaps  be  called  the 
Brazen  Treasury. 

It  is  hardly  kind  to  the  memory  of  Chatham 
to  include  a  speech  on  the  Spanish  question 
delivered  in  Opposition  ;  any  man  was  justified  in 
talking  nonsense  to  get  Walpole  out  of  office. 
But  his  second  speech,  which  derives  a  false 
appearance     of    relevance    from    its    title,    "  The 

^  Sir  Edgar  Jones. 


SOME     FOREIGN     SECRETARIES       15 


Defence  of  Weaker  States,"  contains  an  interesting, 
if  unconscious,  prophecy  : 

"  With  respect  to  Corsica  I  shall  only  say 
that  France  has  obtained  a  more  useful  and 
important  acquisition  in  one  pacific  campaign 
than  in  any  of  her  belligerent  campaigns." 

The  noble  Earl  was  speaking  in  the  year  1770  ; 
six  months  earher  by  the  act  of  policy  to  which 
he  referred  a  child  of  uncertain  temper  called 
Napoleon  came  into  the  world  as  a  French  subject  : 
it  was  a  French  acquisition  of  which  the  precise 
extent  was  to  be  fully  appreciated  by  Chatham's 
son.  The  wise  compiler  would  include  compara- 
tively few  of  the  innumerable  speeches  inspired 
by  the  really  Great  War ;  there  should  be 
the  admirable  onslaughts  of  Sheridan  upon  the 
traditional  system  of  fighting  British  battles  with 
the  hire-purchase  armies  of  Hesse-Cassel,  "  the 
yosse  comitatus,  the  rabble  of  Germany "  ;  and 
there  will  no  doubt  come  an  interminable  speech 
by  WiUiam  Pitt  on  the  unreliable  diplomacy  of 
the  Consulate,  closing  with  the  celebrated  "  Cur 
igitur  pacem  nolo  ?  Quia  infida  est,  quia  periculosay 
quia  esse  non  potest,^'  an  apostrophe  which  would 
leave  the  present  House  of  Commons  under  the 
impression  that  peace  had  been  concluded  upon 
terms  which  it  was  inadvisable  at  the  present 
moment  to   divulge. 

There  is  no  clearer  statement  of  England's 
claim  to  act  as  the  Special  Constable  of  Europe 
than  Palmerston's  Polish  speech  of  1848  : 

"  I  hold  that  the  real  policy  of  England— 
apart  from  questions  which  involve  her  own 


16  SUPERS 


particular  interests,  political  or  commercial — 
is  to  be  the  champion  of  justice  and  right ; 
pursuing  that  course  with  moderation  and  pru- 
dence, not  becoming  the  Quixote  of  the  world, 
but  giving  the  weight  of  her  moral  sanction 
and  support  wherever  she  thinks  that  justice 
is,  and  wherever  she  thinks  that  wrong  has 
been  done." 

It  is  surprising  that  no  contemporary  seems 
to  have  noticed  the  quaint  humour  of  this 
statement   of  policy    by    a    country    without    an 

army. 

Perhaps  the  most  instructive  pieces  in  the  col- 
lection are  the  speeches  delivered  by  Earl  Russell 
and  Mr.  Disraeli  in  1864  upon  the  Austro-Prussian 
invasion  of  Denmark.  The  Treaty  of  London 
had  undoubtedly  placed  Great  Britain  under  cer- 
tain obligations  with  regard  to  Danish  integrity. 
The  Prussians  had  occupied  Schleswig-Holstein 
and  driven  the  Danes  behind  the  lines  of  Diippel. 
But  "  my  Lords,  our  honour  not  being  engaged, 
we  have  to  consider  what  we  might  be  led  to  do 
for  the  interests  of  other  Powers,  and  for  the  sake 
of  that  balance  of  power  which  in  1852  was  declared 
by  general  consent  to  be  connected  with  the  inte- 
grity of  Denmark.  ...  In  the  first  place,  is  it 
the  duty  of  this  country— if  we  are  to  undertake 
the  preservation  of  the  balance  of  power  in  Europe 
as  it  was  recognized  in  1852 — is  it  a  duty  incumbent 
on  us  alone  ?  "  This  argument  was  supplemented 
a  week  later  by  Mr.  Disraeli,  when  he  informed 
another  place  that  "under  that  Treaty  England 
incurred    no    legal    responsibility    which    was    not 


SOME     FOREIGN     SECRETARIES       17 

equally  entered  into  by  France  and  by  Russia." 
These  speeches  are  a  mine  of  unheroic  but  ingenious 
argument,  with  which  Ministers  of  the  Crown  might 
have  defended  the  non-intervention  of  England 
in  the  war  for  Belgium.  They  were  explained 
two  years  later,  when  Lord  Stanley  expounded 
after  Sadowa  "  the  feeling  that  we  ought  not 
to  be  dragged  into  these  Continental  wars," 
and  added  that  "  if  North  Germany  is  to  become 
a  single  Great  Power,  I  do  not  see  that  any 
English  interest  is  in  the  least  degree  affected," 
it  must  be  remembered  that  the  noble  Lord 
was  at  that  date  sleepless  with  the  fear  of 
French  chassepots  and  the  military  efficiency  of 
the  Second  Empire. 

But  the  brightest  jewel  in  the  Downing  Street 
coronal  is  the  speech  in  which  the  Earl  of  Beacons- 
field  laid  the  Treaty  of  Berlin  upon  the  table 
of  the  House  of  Lords.  Disraeli  at  his  worst  was  a 
political  Perlmutter,  and  his  ready-made  formulae 
never  fitted  his  country  worse.  If  his  novels  were 
always  the  novels  of  a  politician,  his  politics  were 
never  more  obviously  the  politics  of  a  novelist. 
An  accident  of  youth  had  taken  the  noble  Earl 
upon  a  pleasure  cruise  in  the  Levant,  and  it  resulted 
that  forty  years  later  his  country  was  pledged 
to  the  sacred  cause  of  Turkey.  The  Sikhs  came 
to  Malta,  the  Fleet  went  to  Besika  Bay,  and  Mr. 
Macdermott  was  understood  to  observe  that  the 
Russians  should  not  have  Constantinople.  The 
Prime  Minister  agreed  with  him,  and  went  to 
Berlin  to  say  so  :  the  result  was  that  miracle  of 
diplomatic  ingenuity  which  Europe  has  been 
occupied  in  destroying  for  the  last  eight  years. 

2 


18  SUPERS 


*'  My  Lords,  it  has  been  said  that  no  limit 
has  been  fixed  to  the  occupation  of  Bosnia 
by  Austria.  Well,  I  think  that  was  a  very 
wise  step." 

There  you  have  the  elements  of  the  annexation 
crisis  of  1908  and  the  assassination  of  the  Arch- 
duke Franz  Ferdinand  in  1914. 

"  It  is  not  the  first  time  that  Austria  has 
occupied  provinces  at  the  request  of  Europe 
to  ensure  that  order  and  tranquillity,  which 
are  European  interests,  might  prevail  in  them. 
Not  once,  twice,  or  thrice  has  Austria  under- 
taken such  an  office." 

To  the  happy  monuments  of  the  Netherlands 
and  North  Italy  Lord  Beaconsfield  gaily  added 
Old  Serbia  :  it  is  the  problem  before  Europe  to-day. 
With  regard  to  Bulgaria  he  added  with  pride  : 

"  The  new  Principality,  which  was  to  exer- 
cise such  an  influence  and  produce  a  revolution 
in  the  disposition  of  the  territory  and  policy 
of  that  part  of  the  globe,  is  now  merely  a 
state  in  the  Valley  of  the  Danube,  and  both 
in  its  extent  and  population  is  reduced  to 
one-third  of  what  was  contemplated  by  the 
Treaty  of  San  Stefano." 


^» 


That  is  the  direct  cause  of  the  Balkan  War, 
and  when  Turkey  emerged  shattered  from  that 
conflict  Germany  entered  on  the  phase  of  disillu- 
sioned desperation  which  brought  it  to  the  mad- 
dog  policy  of  the  summer  of  1914.  It  was  a  little 
bitter  of  the  anthologist  to  reprint  that  speech  in 


SOME     FOREIGN     SECRETARIES       19 

that  year.  Of  the  speeches  provoked  by  the  last 
war  (or  is  it  the  last  but  one  ?)  Mr.  Asquith's, 
in  addition  to  his  successful  negotiation  of  Mr. 
George  Morrow's  shibboleth  "  we  are  unsheathing 
our  sword,"  were  at  once  the  shortest  and  the 
best.  Viscount  Grey  was  almost  offensively  simple  : 
one  cannot  satisfactorily  transpose  all  politics  and 
half  history  into  words  of  one  syllable,  and  the 
dialect  of  Mrs.  Markham  is  unsuited  to  the  broad 
treatment  of  European  problems.  Mr.  Lloyd 
George  was  more  characteristic.  The  enemy  were 
reviled  as  though  they  had  been  Unionists  ;  and 
in  the  last  round  that  ear,  always  so  near  to  the 
ground,  detected  the  coming  boon  in  pugilism, 
and  its  master  became  the  spokesman  of  Western 
Europe  on  the  strength  of  a  metaphor  from  the 
prize-ring. 

It  would  be  cruel  to  ask  the  editor  of  such  a 
collection  for  an  index,  which  must  contain  such 
entries  as  "  Prussia,  nobility  of,  p.  323 ;  perfidy 
of,  p.  537."  Which  is  the  best  of  the  Balance 
of  Power. 


SOME    HISTORIANS 

IT   was   Quintillian  or  Mr.  Max   Beerbohm  who 
said,  "  History  repeats  itself  :  historians  repeat 
each   other."     The   saying    is   full   of  the   mellow 
wisdom   of  either   writer,    and   stamped   with   the 
peculiar  veracity  of  the  Silver  Age  of  Roman  or 
British   epigram.     One  might  have  added,   if  the 
aphorist  had  stayed  for  an  answer,  that  history  is 
rather  interesting  when  it  repeats  itself :  historians 
are  not.     In  France,  which  is  an  enlightened  country 
enjoying   the    benefits    of   the    Revolution    and    a 
public  examination  in  rhetoric,  historians  are  ex- 
pected to  write  in  a  single  and  classical  style  of 
French.     The  result  is  sometimes  a  rather  irritating 
uniformity ;     it    is    one    long    Taine    that    has    no 
turning,  and  any  quotation  may  be  attributed  with 
safety  to  Guizot,  because  la  nuit  tons  les  chats  sont 
gris.     But   in   England,   which  is   a  free  country, 
the  restrictions  natural  to  ignorant  (and  immoral) 
foreigners   are  put  off  by  the  rough  island  race, 
and  history  is  written  in  a  dialect  which  is  not 
curable  by  education,  and  cannot  (it  would  seem) 
be  prevented  by  injunction. 

Historians'  English  is  not  a  style  ;  it  is  an  indus- 
trial disease.  The  thing  is  probably  scheduled 
in  the  Workmen's  Compensation  Act,  and  the 
publisher    may    be    required    upon    notice    of   the 

20 


SOME      HISTORIANS        21 

attack  to  make  a  suitable  payment  to  the  writer's 
dependants.     The  workers  in  this  dangerous  trade 
are    required    to    adopt    (hke    Mahomet's    coffin) 
a  detached  standpoint — ^that  is,  to  write  as  if  they 
took  no  interest  in  the  subject.     Since  it  is  not 
considered  good  form  for  a  graduate  of  less  than 
sixty   years'    standing  to   write   upon   any   period 
that  is  either  familiar  or  interesting,  this  feeling 
is    easily    acquired,    and    the    resulting   narrations 
present  the  dreary  impartiality  of  the  Recording 
Angel  without  that  completeness  which  is  the  sole 
attraction  of  his  style.     Wilde  complained  of  Mr. 
Hall  Caine  that  he  wrote  at  the  top  of  his  voice  ; 
but  a  modern  historian,  when  he  is  really  detached, 
writes  like  some  one  talking  in  the  next  room,  and 
few   writers   have   equalled   the   legal  precision  of 
Coxe's    observation   that    the    Turks   "  sawed   the 
Archbishop   and    the    Commandant    in   half,   and 
committed  other  grave  violations  of  international 
law." 

Having  purged  his  mind  of  all  unsteadying  interest 
in  the  subject,  the  young  historian  should  adopt 
a  moral  code  of  more  than  Malthusian  severity, 
which  may  be  learned  from  any  American  writer 
of  the  last  century  upon  the  Renaissance  or  the 
decadence  of  Spain.  This  manner,  which  is  espe- 
cially necessary  in  passages  dealing  with  character, 
will  lend  to  his  work  the  grave  dignity  that  is 
requisite  for  translation  into  Latin  prose,  that 
supreme  test  of  an  historian's  style.  It  will  be 
his  misfortune  to  meet  upon  the  byways  of  history 
the  oddest  and  most  abnormal  persons,  and  he 
should  keep  by  him  (unless  he  wishes  to  forfeit 
his     Fellowship)    some     convenient     formula    by 


22  SUPERS 


which  he  may  indicate  at  once  the  enormity  of 
the  subject  and  the  disapproval  of  the  writer.  The 
writings  of  Lord  Macaulay  will  furnish  him  at 
need  with  the  necessary  facility  in  hghtning  char- 
acterization. It  was  the  practice  of  Cicero  to 
label  his  contemporaries  without  distinction  as 
"  heavy  men,"  and  the  characters  of  history  are 
easily  divisible  into  "  far-seeing  statesmen "  and 
"  reckless  Hbertines."  It  may  be  objected  that 
although  it  is  sufficient  for  the  purposes  of 
contemporary  caricature  to  represent  Mr.  Glad- 
stone as  a  collar  or  Mr.  Chamberlain  as  an  eye- 
glass, it  is  an  inadequate  record  for  posterity. 
But  it  is  impossible  for  a  busy  man  to  write  history 
without  formulae,  and  after  all  sheep  are  sheep  and 
goats  are  goats.  Lord  Macaulay  once  wrote  of 
some  one,  "  In  private  hfe  he  was  stern,  morose, 
and  inexorable  "  :  he  was  probably  a  Dutchman. 
It  is  a  passage  which  has  served  as  a  lasting  model 
for  the  historian's  treatment  of  character.  I  had 
always  imagined  that  Cliche  was  a  suburb  of 
Paris,  until  I  discovered  it  to  be  a  street  in  Oxford. 
Thus,  if  the  working  historian  is  faced  with  a 
period  of  "  deplorable  excesses,"  he  handles  it 
like  a  man,  and  writes  always  as  if  he  was  illus- 
trated  with   steel   engravings  : 

The  imbecile  king  now  ripened  rapidly  to- 
wards a  crisis.  Surrounded  by  a  Court  in 
which  the  inanity  of  the  day  was  rivalled  only 
by  the  debauchery  of  the  night,  he  became 
incapable  towards  the  year  1472  of  distin- 
guishing good  from  evil,  a  fact  which  contri- 
buted   considerably    to    the    effectiveness    of 


SOME      HISTORIANS        23 

his  foreign  policy,  but  was  hardly  calculated 
to  conform  with  the  monastic  traditions  of 
his  House.  Long  nights  of  drink  and  dicing 
weakened  a  constitution  that  was  already 
undermined,  and  the  council-table,  where  once 
Campo  Santo  had  presided,  was  disfigured 
with  the  despicable  apparatus  of  Bagatelle, 
The  burghers  of  the  capital  were  horrified 
by  the  wild  laughter  of  his  madcap  courtiers, 
and  when  it  was  reported  in  London  that 
Ladislas  had  played  at  Halma,  the  Court  of 
St.  James's  received  his  envoy  in  the  deepest 
of  ceremonial  mourning. 

That  is  precisely  how  it  is  done.  The  passage 
exhibits  the  benign  and  contemporary  influences 
of  Lord  Macaulay  and  Mr.  Bowdler,  and  it  contains 
all  the  necessary  ingredients,  except  perhaps  a 
"  venal  Chancellor  "  and  a  "  greedy  mistress."  Vice 
is  a  subject  of  especial  interest  to  historians,  who 
are  in  most  cases  residents  in  small  county  towns  ; 
and  there  is  unbounded  truth  in  the  rococo  footnote 
of  a  writer  on  the  Renaissance,  who  said  d  propos 
of  a  Pope  :  "  The  disgusting  details  of  his  vices 
smack  somewhat  of  the  morbid  historian's  lamp." 
The  note  itself  is  a  fine  example  of  that  concrete 
visualization  of  the  subject  which  led  Macaulay 
to  observe  that  in  consequence  of  Frederick's 
invasion  of  Silesia  "  black  men  fought  on 
the  coast  of  Coromandel  and  red  men  scalped 
each  other  by  the  Great  Lakes  of  North 
America." 

A  less  exciting  branch  of  the  historian's  work 
is  the  reproduction  of  contemporary  sayings  and 


24  SUPERS 


speeches.     Tlius,  an  ol^ituary  should  always  close 
on  a  note  of  regretful  quotation  : 

He  lived  in  affluence  and  died  in  great 
pain.  "  Thus,"  it  was  said  by  the  most 
eloquent  of  his  contemporaries,  "  thus  termin- 
ated a  career  as  varied  as  it  was  eventful, 
as  strange  as  it  was  unique.' 


55 


But  for  the  longer  efforts  of  sustained  eloquence 
greater  art  is  required.  It  is  no  longer  usual, 
as  in  Thucydides'  day,  to  compose  completely 
new  speeches,  but  it  is  permissible  for  the  historian 
to  heighten  the  colours  and  even  to  insert  those 
rhetorical  questions  and  complexes  of  personal 
pronouns  which  will  render  the  translation  of  the 
passage  into  Latin  prose  a  work  of  consuming 
interest  and  lasting  profit : 

The  Duke  assembled  his  companions  for 
the  forlorn  hope,  and  addressed  them  briefly 
in  Or  alio  obliqua.  "  His  father,"  he  said, 
"  had  always  cherished  in  his  heart  the  idea 
that  he  would  one  day  return  to  his  own 
people.  Had  he  fallen  in  vain  ?  Was  it 
for  nothing  that  they  had  dyed  with  their 
loyal  blood  the  soil  of  a  hundred  battlefields  ? 
The  past  was  dead,  the  future  was  yet  to 
come.  Let  them  remember  that  great  sacrifices 
were  necessary  for  the  attainment  of  great 
ends,  let  them  think  of  their  homes  and  families, 
and  if  they  had  any  pity  for  an  exile,  an  out- 
cast, and  an  orphan,  let  them  die  fighting." 

That  is  the  kind  of  passage  that  used  to  send 
the  blood  of  Dr.   Bradley  coursing  more  quickly 


SOME      HISTORIANS        25 

through  his  veins.  The  march  of  its  eloquence, 
the  solemnity  of  its  sentiment,  and  the  rich 
balance  of  its  pronouns  unite  to  make  it  a  model 
for  all  historians  :  it  can  be  adapted  for  any  period. 
It  is  not  possible  in  a  short  review  to  include 
the  special  branches  of  the  subject.  Such  are 
those  efficient  modern  text-books,  in  which  events 
are  referred  to  either  as  "  factors  "  (as  if  they  were 
a  sum)  or  as  "  phases  "  (as  if  they  were  the  moon). 
There  is  also  the  solemn  business  of  writing  econ- 
omic history,  in  which  the  historian  may  lapse 
at  will  into  algebra,  and  anything  not  othenvise 
describable  may  be  called  "  social  tissue."  A  special 
subject  is  constituted  by  the  early  conquests  of 
Southern  and  Central  America  ;  in  these  there 
is   a   uniform    opening   for   all   passages   running : 

It  was  now  the  middle  of  October,  and  the 
season  was  drawing  to  an  end.  Soon  the  moun- 
tains would  be  whitened  with  the  snows  of 
winter  and  every  rivulet  swollen  to  a  roaring 
torrent.  Cortez,  whose  determination  only  in- 
creased with  misfortune,  decided  to  delay  his 
march  until  the  inclemency  of  the  season 
abated.  ...  It  was  now  the  middle  of  Novem- 
ber, and  the  season  was  drawing  to  an  end.  .  .  . 

There  is,  finally,  the  method  of  military  history. 
This  may  be  patriotic,  technical,  or  in  the  manner 
prophetically  indicated  by  Virgil  as  Belloc,  horrida 
Belloc.  The  finest  exponent  of  the  patriotic  style 
is  undoubtedly  the  Rev.  W.  H.  Fitchett,  a  dis- 
tinguished colonial  clergyman  and  historian  of  the 
Napoleonic  wars.  His  night-attacks  are  more 
nocturnal,  and  his  scaling  parties  are  more  heroically 


26  SUPERS 


scaligcrous  than  those  of  any  other  writer.  His 
drummer-boys  are  the  most  moving  in  my  hmited 
cirele  of  drummer-boys.  One  gathers  that  the 
Peninsular  War  was  branded  with  pleasing 
incident  of  this  type  : 

The  Night  Attack 

It  was  midnight  when  Staff-Surgeon  Pct- 
tigrew  showed  the  flare  from  the  summit 
of  Sombrero.  At  once  the  whole  plain 
was  alive  with  the  hum  of  the  great 
assault.  The  four  columns  speedily  got  into 
position  with  flares  and  bugles  at  the  head 
of  each.  One  made  straight  for  the  Water- 
gate, a  second  for  the  Bailey-guard,  a  third 
for  the  Porter-house,  and  the  last  (led  by  the 
saintly  Smeathe)  for  the  Tube  station.  Let 
us  follow  the  second  column  on  its  secret 
mission  through  the  night,  lit  by  torches  and 
cheered    on    by    the    huzzas    of    a    thousand 

English     throats.      " the s,"     cried 

Cocker  in  a  voice  hoarse  with  patriotism ; 
at  that  moment  a  red-hot  shot  hurtled  over 
the  plain  and,  ricocheting  treacherously  from 
the  frozen  river,  dashed  the  heroic  leader 
to  the  ground.  Captain  Boffskin,  of  the 
Buffs,   leapt  up  with  the  dry  coughing  howl 

of    the    British    infantryman.      " them," 

he   roared,    " them    to "  ;    and   for 

the  last  fifty  yards  it  was  neck  and  neck 
with  the  ladders.  Our  gallant  drummer-boys 
laid  to  again,  but  suddenly  a  shot  rang  out 
from  the  silent  ramparts.  The  94th  Leger 
were   awake.     We  were   discovered ! 


SOME      HISTORIANS        27 


The  war  of  1870  required  more  special  treatment. 
Its  histories  show  no  peculiar  characteristic, 
but  its  appearances  in  fiction  deserve  special 
attention.     There    is    a    standard    pattern : 

How   THE   Prussians   came   to   Guitry-le-sec 

It  was  a  late  afternoon  in  early  September, 
or  an  early  afternoon  in  late  September— 
I  forget  these  things— when  I  missed  the 
boat  express  from  Kerplouarnec  to  Pouzy- 
le-roi  and  was  forced  by  the  time-table  to 
spend  three  hours  at  the  forgotten  hamlet 
of  Guitry-le-sec,  in  the  heart  of  Dauphine. 
It  contained  besides  a  quantity  of  underfed 
poultry  one  white  church,  one  white  Mairie, 
and  nine  white  houses.  An  old  man  with 
a  white  beard  came  towards  me  up  the  long 
white  road.  "  It  was  on  just  such  an  after- 
noon as  this  forty  years  ago,"  he  began, 
"that  .  .  ." 

"  Stop  !  "  I  said  sharply-.  '*  I  have  met 
you  in  a  previous  existence.  You  are  going 
to  say  that  a  soHtary  Uhlan  appeared  sharply 
outhned  against  the  sky  behind  M.  Jules' 
farm."     He    nodded    feebly. 

"  The  red  trousers  had  left  the  village 
half  an  hour  before  to  look  for  the  hated 
Prussian  in  the  cafes  of  the  neighbouring 
town.  You  were  alone  when  the  spiked  helmets 
marched  in.  You  can  hear  their  shrieking 
fifes  to  this  day."     He  wept  quietly. 

I  went  on.  "  There  was  an  ofhcer  with 
them,  a  proud,  ugly  man  with  a  butter-coloured 


28  SUPERS 


moustache.  He  saw  the  Httle  Mimi  and  drove 
his  coarse  Suabian  hand  upward  through  his 
Mecklenburgcr  moustache.  You  dropped  on 
one  knee.  .  .  ."     But  he  had  fled. 

In  the  first  of  the  three  cafes  I  saw  a  second 
old  man.  "  Come  in,  Monsieur,"  he  said. 
I  waited  on  the  doorstep.  "  It  was  on  just 
such  an  afternoon.  ..."  I  went  on.  At 
the  other  two  cafes  two  further  old  men 
attempted  me  with  the  story  ;  I  told  the  last 
that  he  was  rescued  by  Zouaves,  and  walked 
happily  to  the  station,  to  read  about  Vichy 
Celestins  until  the  train  came  in  from  the 
south. 

The  Russo-Japanese  War  is  a  more  original 
subject  and  derives  its  particular  flavour  from 
the  airy  grace  with  which  Sir  Ian  Hamilton  has 
described  it.     Like  this  : 

Wao-wao,  Jan.  31.— The  rajale  was  purring 
hke  a  mistral  as   I  shaved   this   morning.     I 

wonder  where  it  is  ;    must    ask  .     is 

a  charming  fellow  with  the  face  of  a  Baluchi 
Kashffai  and  a  voice  like  a  circular  saw. 

11.40. — It  was  eleven-forty  when  I  looked 
at  my  watch.  The  shrapnel-bursts  look  like 
a  plantation  of  powder-puffs  suspended  in 
the  sky.  Victor  says  there  is  a  battle  going 
on  :    capital  chap  Victor. 

2  P.M.— Lunched  with  an  American  lady- 
doctor.  How  feminine  the  Americans  can 
be. 

7  P.M.— A  great  day.  It  was  Donkelsdorp 
over  again.     Substitute  the  Tenth  Army  for 


SOME      HISTORIANS        29 

the  Traffordshires'  baggage  waggon,  swell 
Honks  Spruit  into  the  roaring  Wang-ho, 
elevate  Oom  Kop  into  the  frowning  scarp  of 
Pyjiyama,  and  you  have  it.  The  Staff  were 
obviously  gratified  when  I  told  them  about 
Donkelsdorp. 

The  Rooskis  came  over  the  crest-line  in 
a  huddle  of  massed  battalions,  and  Gazeka 
was  after  them  like  a  rat  after  a  terrier.  I 
knew  that  his  horse-guns  had  no  horses  (a 
rule  of  the  Japanese  service  to  discourage 
unnecessary  changing  of  ground),  but  his 
men  bit  the  trails  and  dragged  them  up  by 
their  teeth.  Slowly  the  Muscovites  peeled 
off  the  steaming  mountain  and  took  the 
funicular  down  the  other  side. 

I    wonder    what    my   friend    Smuts   would 

make  of  the  Yen-tai  coal  mine  ?     Well,  well 

"  Something  accomplished,  something  done  ." 

The  technical  manner  is  more  difficult  of  ac- 
quisition for  the  beginner,  since  it  involves  a 
knowledge  of  at  least  two  European  languages. 
It  is  cardinal  rule  that  all  places  should  be  described 
as  points  d'appui,  the  simple  process  of  scouting 
looks  far  better  as  Verchleierung,  and  the  adjective 
"  strategical  "  may  be  used  without  any  meaning 
in  front  of  any  noun. 

But  the  military  manner  was  revolutionized  by 
the  war.  Mr.  Belloc  created  a  new  Land  and  a 
new  Water.  We  know  now  why  the  Persian 
commanders  demanded  "  earth  and  water "  on 
their  entrance  into  a  Greek  town ;  it  was  the 
weekly    demand    of   the   Great    General    Staff,    as 


30  SUPERS 


it  called  for  its  favourite  paper.  Mr.  Belloc  has 
woven  Baedeker  and  geometry  into  a  new  style  : 
it  is  the  last  cry  of  historians'  English,  because 
one  was  invented  by  a  German  and  the  other  by 
a  Greek. 


SOME   STRATEGISTS 

IT  must  be  nearly  thirty  years  since  the  late 
Captain  Mahan  stood  silent  on  a  peak  in 
Darien  in  the  first  shock  of  the  discovery 
that  the  waters  of  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  Oceans 
were  wet.  The  thoughtful  sailor  indulged  his 
companions  of  the  United  States  Naval  War 
College  with  the  wild  surmise  that  a  liquid  of  this 
character  might  be  expected  to  sustain  the  weight 
of  warships  and  that  the  operations  of  such  vessels 
would  possess  a  distinct  importance  in  determining 
the  result  of  disputes  between  nations,  always 
provided  that  they  were  not  (as  in  the  happy 
cases  of  Switzerland,  Luxemburg,  and  Liechtenstein) 
entirely  cut  off  from  the  sea.  The  leaping  inferences 
of  his  discovery  were  communicated,  through  his 
English  publisher,  to  the  inhabited  world,  and 
the  doctrine  of  Sea  Power  became  (if  it  ever 
needed  to  become)  a  commonplace.  Yet  there 
was  a  real  merit  in  Mahan's  work.  It  is  easy  to 
complain  of  him,  as  Wilde  complained  of  a  contem- 
porary, that  he  pursued  the  obvious  with  the 
enthusiasm  of  a  short-sighted  detective ;  but  it  is 
even  easier  to  forget  that  he  produced  an  articulate 
and  comprehensible  statement  of  matters  which 
had  not,  before  he  wrote,  been  stated  at  all.  Sea 
Power  had  been  for  several  centuries  the  practice 
of  the  British  Navy,   and  the  British   Navy,   by 


32  SUPERS 


reason  of  certain  faults  in  its  up-bringing  and  the 
difficulties  of  literary  composition  on  a  mobile 
surface,  is  not  given  to  self-expression.  Before 
the  year  1880  there  existed  hardly  a  single  state- 
ment of  the  broad  principles  of  naval  strategy, 
and  even  now  there  are  extraordinarily  few. 
Portsmouth  has  never  produced  the  counterpart 
of  those  admirable,  if  unbound,  little  volumes  of 
professional  prose  which  French  soldiers  used  to 
publish  at  Nancy,  and  since  the  Grande  muette 
has  declined  to  explain  its  fundamental  principles, 
one  is  grateful  to  the  enterprising  American  who 
undertook  the  work.  There  are  no  surprises  in 
his  revelation,  and  the  air  of  discovery  is  sometimes 
a  trifle  irritating ;  the  constant  treatment  of 
Venus  as  a  new  planet  would  damn  any  astronomer, 
and  no  one  could  bear  many  walks  with  a  man 
who  insisted  regularly  on  striking  across  Primrose 
Hill  as  an  undiscovered  watershed. 

But  if  Mahan  discovered  nothing  in  particular, 
he  discovered  it  very  well.  One  feels  the  need 
of  his  expository  method  whenever  a  large  and 
obvious  fact  emerges  into  the  area  of  military 
science  without  an  adequate  statement  of  its 
elements.  That  is  precisely  what  has  just 
occurred  in  the  case  of  railways.  We  all  know 
a  railway  when  we  see  one,  and  we  can  all 
grasp,  if  we  can  read  a  newspaper,  what 
railways  mean  in  modern  war.  It  is  obvious 
beyond  the  faintest  hope  of  novelty  that  European 
warfare,  as  it  was  practised  on  the  French  and 
Polish  frontiers,  was  a  struggle  for  railways  con- 
ducted by  men  at  the  end  of  railways  who  would 
be  reduced  to  fisticuffs  in  a  week  and  to  starvation 


SOME       STRATEGISTS       33 

in  a  fortnight  if  their  railways  could  be  paralysed. 
But  so  far  as  broad  and  popular  exposition  in  general 
terms  is  concerned,  the  military  science  of  railways 
is  a  subject  as  uncharted  as  Lake  Chad  when  our 
fathers  went  to  school.  It  is  a  white  patch  on 
the  map  that  cries  out  for  the  explanatory  longi- 
tude, the  illuminating  platitude  of  the  American 
sea-captain.  Wanted,  one  cries,  wanted  a  Mahan. 
It  was  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  who  insisted  long  before 
they  took  the  horse  omnibuses  off  the  road  that 
the  world  would  be  transformed  by  its  means  of 
communication.  The  change  was  one  of  those 
queer,  unconscious  achievements  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century,  when  little  men  in  black  coats  produced 
the  most  astonishing  results  whilst  thinking  hard 
all  the  time  about  something  else.  It  began  in 
the  year  1830  when  a  British  regiment  was 
trundled  thirty-four  miles  in  two  hours  over  the 
far  from  permanent  way  of  the  Liverpool  and 
Manchester  Railway.  Then,  like  most  things  in 
the  progress  of  Europe,  having  been  done  by  an 
Englishman,  it  was  explained  by  a  German.  A 
Westphalian  bearing  the  honoured,  if  slightly 
misspelt,  name  of  Harkort  startled  his  Landtag 
with  railway  projects  and  produced  a  pamphlet 
on  the  military  value  of  a  hne  between  Minden 
and  Cologne.  His  heated  imagination  played 
recklessly  round  the  prospect : 

"  Let  us  suppose  that  we  had  a  railway  and 
a  telegraph  line  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Rhine 
from  Mainz  to  Wesel.  Any  crossing  of  the 
Rhine  by  the  French  would  then  scarcely 
be  possible,  since  we  should  be  able  to  bring 

3 


34  SUPERS 


a  strong  defensive   force   on  the  spot  before 
the  attempt  could   be  developed. 

These  things  may  appear  very  strange  to- 
day ;  yet  in  the  womb  of  the  future  there 
slumbers  the  seed  of  great  developments  in 
railways,  the  results  of  which  it  is  as  yet  quite 
beyond  our  powers  to  foresee.' 


5} 


It  was  the  year  1888,  and  the  German  public 
was  promptly  informed  by  one  distinguished  soldier 
that  infantry  would  arrive  sooner  if  they  marched, 
whilst    another    added    that    the    conveyance    of 
cavalry  and  artillery  by  train  would  be  a  sheer 
impossibility.     Meanwhile  the  War  Office  produced 
in  1846  a  "  Regulation  relative  to  the  Conveyance 
of  Her  Majesty's  Forces,  their  Baggage  and  Stores, 
by  Rail,"  and  Belgium  gave  the  Continent  a  lead 
in  railway  construction.     The  military  advantages 
of  a  railway  system  were  repeatedly   emphasized 
in  admirable  prose  by  the  subjects  of  I.ouis  Philippe, 
and    there    was    some    interesting    early    work    in 
Central  Europe.     The  Prussians  moved  12,000  men 
over  two  lines  in  1846,  a  Russian  army  corps  en- 
trained in  1849  and  moved  into  Austrian  territory 
to   suppress   the   revolution   in   Moravia,    and   the 
Austrians  took  75,000  men,  8,000  horses,  and  1,000 
waggons  from  the  Danube  to  the  Silesian  frontier 
in  that  movement  of  troops  which  resulted  in  the 
humiliation  of  Prussia  at  Olmiitz  and  sixteen  years 
of  smouldering  resentment  that  found  expression 
at  Koniggratz. 

Railways  entered  the  repertory  of  European 
warfare  too  late  to  be  used  by  Napoleon  or  to  be 
more   than   tried   by  von   Moltke.     With  a   single 


SOME       STRATEGISTS       35 

line  from  Paris  to  Vienna  the  Emperor  might  have 
conquered  Europe  in  two  months  instead  of  in 
two  years,  and  a  railway  system  would  have  multi- 
plied the  Grand  Armee  to  hold  off  the  Russians 
in  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Warsaw  whilst  the  English 
in  the  Peninsula  were  driven  into  the  sea.  The 
first  European  war  to  be  conducted  after  the 
construction  of  railways  was  the  campaign  of 
Magenta  and  Solferino.  Napoleon  III  took  a 
French  army  into  Italy  and,  after  making  consider- 
able use  of  the  railway  ])etween  Paris  and  various 
stations  on  the  south  coast  and  on  the  Itahan 
frontier,  he  ignored  its  existence  with  heroic 
completeness  in  an  attempt  to  conduct  his  opera- 
tions on  orthodox  Napoleonic  lines.  Von 
Moltke's  papers,  in  which  the  design  against 
Austria  was  progressively  developed  in  the  years 
between  1860  and  186G,  are  a  mine  of  various 
wisdom  upon  the  political  and  mihtary  conforma- 
tion of  Europe  ;  but  there  is  no  adequate  treat- 
ment of  railways.  In  the  campaign  of  1866, 
which  saw  the  entry  of  the  field  telegraph,  the 
Prussians  made  no  brilliant  use  of  their  own  and 
the  Saxon  systems,  but  there  was  a  sensational 
employment  of  railways  on  the  Italian  front ; 
the  Austrian  commanders  were  scandalized  by 
the  repeated  appearance  of  hostile  troops  in  num- 
bers quite  unrecognized  by  the  rules,  and  a  French 
military  writer  was  inspired  to  lyrical  comment  on 
the  subjexjt  in  the  Spectateur  Militaire  for  Septem- 
ber 1869.  Nine  months  later  his  country  was 
invaded  by  the  armies  of  the  North  German  Con- 
federation and  its  allies  after  an  excellent  con- 
centration by  railway  in  the  Palatinate. 


36  SUPERS 


But  the  real  impetus  to  the  development  and 
to  the  progress  of  so  many  branehes  of  modern 
warfare  came  from  the  American  Civil  War.  The 
earnest  and  irritable  men  who  conducted  the  some- 
what tangential  operations  of  the  Union  armies 
were  confronted  by  every  problem  of  the  military 
use  of  railways.  The  supply  of  troops  by  rail- 
borne  commissariat,  the  destruction  of  railways 
(which  has  always  been  a  distinctively  American, 
though  latterly  an  almost  exclusively  Mexican 
accomplishment),  and  the  organization  of  railway 
services  by  technical  troops  all  emerged  from  the 
long  conflict.  McCallum  was  the  first  of  the  rail- 
way soldiers,  and  the  troubles  of  his  subordinates 
with  the  military  element  are  illustrated  by  an 
appealing  telegram  of  the  War  Department  : 

"  Be  patient  as  possible  with  the  Generals. 
Some  of  them  will  trouble  you  more  than 
they  will  tlie  enemy.' 


55 


Africa  was  introduced  to  the  military  railway 
by  Lord  Kitchener's  conquest  of  the  Soudan  by 
rail,  and  the  Trans-Siberian  Railway  was  the 
instrument  with  which  Russia  conducted  her 
astonishing  defensive  in  Manchuria  at  the  end  of 
a  single  line. 

The  late  war,  which  began  with  a  German  move 
along  the  ordinary  route  of  the  Paris-Berlin  ex- 
presses and  degenerated  in  eight  weeks  into  a 
scramble  for  the  railway  junctions  of  Northern 
France,  was  conducted  with  railways  for  railways. 
The  German  defensive  on  the  eastern  front  consisted 
merely  of  movements  round  the  parallel  lines 
of  the  German  railway-citadel,  and  the  offensive 


SOME       STRATEGISTS       37 


of  1915  was  solely  a  lunge  at  the  railway  system 
of  Poland.  Without  railways  the  war  would  have 
ended  in  the  suburbs  of  Berlin  in  six  weeks.  It 
was  the  railway,  and  the  railway  alone,  that  made 
possible  the  vast  and  paralysed  armies  that  lay 
helplessly  opposite  to  each  other  across  Europe, 
breathing  heavily,  eating  what  their  railways 
brought  them,  and  shooting  away  what  their 
railways  could  carry  of  the  national  accumulations 
of  metal  goods. 

It  was  in  the  Great  War  the  hand  that  ruled  the 
railway  rocked  the  world.  There  was  no  romance 
in  it.  We  have  learnt  in  bitterness  that  the  glory 
of  war  is  the  wretchedness  of  its  most  broken 
man,  and  the  dignity  of  war  is  the  vulgarity 
of  its  basest  recruiting-poster.  The  call  of  Mr. 
Kipling's  red  gods  dwindled  to  Mr.  Tennant's 
sartorical  enquiry  whether  our  best  boy  was  in 
khaki,  and  as  the  young  men  marched  away 
our  ideals  faded  until  we  were  left  alone  with  those 
less  disinterested  men  of  business  in  whose  hearts 
Mr.  Asquith's  burning  words  will  always  find 
an  echo :  "  No  price,"  as  the  contractor  said, 
"  can  be  too  high  when  honour  and  freedom  are 
at  stake." 

Warfare  had  been  invested  by  Victorian  romance 
with  a  certain  glamour.  It  was  generally  believed 
that  the  saviours  of  their  country  would  leave  for 
the  railway- station  in  scenes  of  mild  but  appro- 
priate emotion,  returning  after  a  short  interval 
victorious  and  bronzed  to  the  proper  tint  of  brown, 
which  is  familiar  to  all  playgoers  as  the  unfailing 
indication  of  successful  military  service.  But  in 
the  autumn  of  1914  we  were  thrust  suddenly  into 


38  SUPERS 


reality ;  it  was  an  experience  which  the  people 
of  Europe  are  not  likely  to  forget.  In  absolute 
silence  and  without  a  single  aid  to  the  heroic  ima- 
gination men  went  into  the  first  campaign  of  the 
European  War.  If  they  expected  it  to  be  autumn 
manoeuvres  with  ball-cartridge,  they  were  bitterly 
surprised.  Moving  with  the  secrecy  of  criminals, 
men  killed  one  another  with  machines  ;  at  the  orders 
of  their  Governments,  which  had  for  many  years 
laboriously  discouraged  crime,  they  committed 
murder,  burglary,  and  rape.  The  method  of 
European  warfare  was  exposed  once  and  for  all  ; 
it  had  been  familiar  to  the  Middle  Ages  as  an  aris- 
tocratic celebration  of  the  harvest  festival,  and  it 
had  been  permitted  to  survive  in  modern  times  as 
a  form  of  international  argument,  as  the  ultimate 
form  of  controversy  in  the  European  family : 
a  nation  went  to  war  when  its  foreign  relations 
became  impossible.  In  the  area  of  actual  warfare 
it  varied  between  heroic  mud-larking  and  the 
abomination  of  desolation,  and  outside  in  Europe 
it  presented  itself  as  an  enormous  and  unfascinat- 
ing  blend  of  a  bank  failure  and  a  railway  accident. 
That  is  a  European  war. 


SOME    CRITICS 

THE  sensitive  person,  if  he  is  still  alive,  must 
be  having  a  most  disturbing  time.  One 
fancies  the  poor  gentleman,  with  his  fine  flair 
for  consistency  and  his  exact  eye  for  an  historical 
parallel,  a  trifle  out  of  breath  in  the  Revue  of 
Revues  in  which  it  is  our  present  privilege  to  live. 
Parties  and  principles  join  hands  and  whirl  round 
him  in  a  ragtime  Carmagnole,  and  even  the  solemn 
processes  of  the  Constitution  having  once  been 
set  to  the  syncopated  goose-step  of  the  Defence 
of  the  Realm  Regulations  can  never  be  completely 
relied  on  again.  Indeed,  he  resembles  more 
than  a  little,  as  he  blinks  his  way  across  the  con- 
temporary stage,  that  "  ancient,  contemplative 
person  "  whose  reminiscent  bath-chair  was  trundled 
by  Mr.  Henry  James  through  the  stamp  and  thunder 
of  The  American  Scene. 

But  of  all  his  senses  it  is  the  hearing  that  has 
been  most  cruelly  assaulted  by  the  Saturnalia 
de  nos  jours.  For  the  first  months  after  the  out- 
break of  war  it  vibrated  painfully  to  the  chest- 
notes  of  our  leading  thinkers  on  other  subjects 
attuning  themselves  indefatigably  to  the  new 
European  accompaniment.  Then  for  a  short  but 
harrowing  period  the  national  inteUigence  was  at 
the  mercy  of  any  Boanerges  that  could  command 
a  luncheon-club  and  a  reporter.  In  a  later  phase, 
as  the  war  dropped  to  a  deeper  note  and  enemy 

39 


40  SUPERS 


action  checked  the  free  import  of  paper-making 
materials,  his  ears  reverberated  with  the  invitations 
of  the  organ-voice  of  England  to  tuck  in  his  two- 
penny (or,  as  it  has  since  become,  his  threepenny). 
Followed  a  sound  of  breaking  window-glass  and 
the  voice  of  one  Billing  in  the  wilderness.  And 
so  the  shifting  voices  of  the  war  passed  painfully 
through  his  hearing  into  history.  It  must  have 
seemed  sometimes  to  the  listener  like  the  dreary 
study  by  a  sleepless  man  of  the  stages  of  sound 
which  carry  last  night  into  to-morrow,  the  gradual 
change  from  the  crowding  and  confidential  voices 
of  late  evening  to  the  loud  and  scattered  talkers 
of  the  first  small  hours  and  from  them  to  the  quiet 
of  the  middle  night,  the  miscalculations  of  prema- 
ture and  inaccurate  poultry,  the  first  light,  and 
the  earliest  horse.  With  the  great  dawn  of  the 
armistice  he  could  hear  the  normal  traffic  of  the 
world  passing  his  windows  again,  and  the  hoofs 
of  all  the  hacks  in  England  began  to  rattle  noisily 
over  the  cobble-stones  to  the  cheerful  clatter  of 
Sir  James  Barrie's  cans  as  he  went  round  with 
the  milk  of  human  kindness. 

But  before  the  reviving  national  voices  had 
recovered  their  full  strength,  they  were  inter- 
penetrated and  almost  drowned  by  a  new  note  of 
a  deeper  and  more  sinister  pitch.  The  cri  du 
coroner,  which  started  its  unobtrusive  undertone 
in  the  remoter  corners  of  the  newspapers,  swelled 
gradually  fuller  and  louder  and  deeper  until  at 
last,  dominating  every  competing  voice,  it  rolled 
from  shore  to  shore  with  the  proud  resonance  of 
an  accompanist  that  has  succeeded  in  submerging 
the  solo. 


SOME       CRITICS  41 

It  is  not  so  long  since  the  late  Lord  Tennyson 
warned  his  fellow-countrymen  that  kind  hearts 
are  more  than  coroners,  and  it  is  hardly  surprising 
that  a  public  which  has  always  disregarded  its 
poets  appears  recently  to  have  enthroned  its 
coroners  at  an  unprecedented  altitude.  Their 
obiter  dicta,  their  lightest  ejaculations,  their  con- 
siderate announcements  of  forthcoming  attractions 
secured  for  the  next  sitting  have  been  quoted  with 
a  volume  of  publicity  that  must  be  unspeakably 
distasteful  to  those  reticent  men.  But  persevering 
doggedly  in  face  of  the  discouragements  offered 
by  verbatim  reports  and  sketching  in  court,  those 
macabre  exponents  of  medical  jurisprudence,  whose 
surroundings  combine  the  attractions  of  an  operat- 
ing theatre  with  the  fascination  of  the  Third  Degree, 
did  and  more  than  did  the  duty  which  England 
expected  of  them.  There  was  an  ugly  rush  of 
Daniels  come  to  judgment,  and  the  Peace  Con- 
ference was  triumphantly  elbowed  into  those  quiet 
corners  of  the  papers  in  which  the  attention  of 
sub-editors  is  alternately  wooed  by  the  disturbing 
progress  of  bee-disease  in  the  Isle  of  Wight  and 
the  gratifying  longevity  of  maiden  ladies  in  Here- 
fordshire. The  public  mind  was  completely  obsessed. 
Impressionable  lovers  shocked  one  another  by 
writing  that  dope  deferred  maketh  the  heart  sick  ; 
and  it  is  even  said  that  a  schoolboy  whose  passion 
for  topicality  had  recently  involved  him  in  serious 
trouble  for  translating  In  hoc  signo  vinces,  that 
fiery  message  of  the  firmament  to  the  pious  Emperor, 
by  the  still  more  startling  sky-sign,  "  That's  the 
stuff  to  give  them,"  was  ordered  to  write  twenty 
cantos  of  Dante  in  a  round  hand  as  a  penalty  for 


42  SUPERS 


the  suggestion  that  the  gates  of  the  Inferno  were 
superscribed  "All  dope  abandon,  ye  who  enter  here." 

The  period  was  in  every  way  a  wearing  one  for 
the  national  intelligence  ;  but  the  worst  of  it  has 
yet  to  be  described.  A  few  months  earlier  the 
coroner  spirit,  speaking  with  a  slight  but  notice- 
able American  accent,  had  invaded  the  quiet 
chambers  of  literary  criticism,  and  the  inquest 
was  on  Henry  James.  It  was  conducted  in  a 
discreet  periodical  with  an  orange  cover  ^  by 
a  number  of  distinguished  members  of  our  inmost 
intelligentzia,  who  maintained  throughout  the  pro- 
ceedings, which  were  somewhat  painful,  the  perfect 
assurance  of  a  juge  (T instruction  with  a  corpse  up 
his  sleeve.  They  were  so  thoroughly  determined 
to  "sit  on  "  the  body,  as  our  dear  author  would 
have  said,  nudging  us  with  his  inimitably  knowing 
inverted  commas  at  the  little  colloquiahsm  ;  and 
from  certain  passages  in  the  summing-up  they 
appeared  to  be  inviting  the  jury  to  find  that,  in 
deference  to  the  popular  taste  for  excess  in  anaes- 
thetics, the  end  had  been  due  to  aesthetics  impro- 
perly administered. 

There  are  great  parts  of  Mr.  Ezra  Pound's  roomy 
rather  than  voluminous  constatation  that,  in  his 
own  austere  phrase,  "  I  must  reject  according  to 
my  lights  as  bad  writing ;  another  part  is  a  specialite, 
a  pleasure  for  certain  temperaments  only."  One 
regrets  that  one  cannot  share  it.  There  is  a  passage 
of  delirious  merriment  about  the  Notes  on  Novelists  : 

"  The   Times   Literary  Supplement  had  got 
so   groggy   that   something   had   to    be   done. 

'  The  Little  Review. 


SOME       CRITICS  43 


Orders  went  forth  from  Shushan  wherein  is 
the  palace  that  '  something  had  to  be  done.' 
The  '  lAt.  Sup.'  was  on  the  bhnk  ;  on  the  bhnk 
so  shockin'  an'  staggerin'  that  something 
had  to  be  done  to  boost  up  its  giddy  prestige. 
There  were  but  two  spotless  paladins,  two 
giddy  Galahads  available  —  Henry  James  and 
the  impeccable  Beerbohm.  So  Max  and  the 
great  stylist  were  tackled,  cajoled,  bribed, 
wheedled,  and  what  not.  And  the  Notes  on 
Novelists  were  '  got  out  of  the  late  Henry 
somehow,  after  all.'  " 

No. 

Or,  again,  the  following  selection  from  the  thoughts 
that  rise  in  Mr.  Pound  on  confrontation  with 
one  of  the  later  novels  : 

"  The  Awkward  Age,  fairy  godmother  and 
spotless  lamb  and  all  the  rest  of  it.  .  .  .  Open- 
ing tour  de  force,  a  study  in  punks,  a  cheese 
souffle  of  the  leprous  crust  of  society  done  to 
a  turn  and  a  niceness  save  when  he  puts  on 
the  didcissimo,  vox  humana,  stop.  .  .  .  These 
timbres  and  tonalities  are  his  stronghold ; 
he  is  ignorant  of  nearly  everything  else. 
It  is  all  very  well  to  say  that  modern  life 
is  largely  made  up  of  vellities,  atmospheres, 
timbres,  nuances,  etc.,  but  if  people  really 
spent  as  much  time  fussing,  to  the  extent  of 
the  Jamesian  fuss,  about  such  normal, 
trifling,  age-old  affairs  as  slight  inchnations 
to  adultery,  slight  disinclinations  to  marry, 
to  refrain  from  marrying,  etc.  etc.,  hfe 
would     scarcely     be     worth     the     bother     of 


44  SUPERS 


keeping  on  with  it.  It  is  also  contendable 
that  one  must  depict  such  mush  in  order 
to  aboHsh  it." 

This,  with  great  respect — as  one  should  say 
when  one  rises  to  interrupt  a  runaway  coroner — 
is  the  merest  literary  jazz,  with  trap-drums  banging, 
tin  trays  clashing,  and  the  inspiriting  ululations 
of  all  that  splendid  battery  of  sound  producers 
with  which  the  virihty  of  the  New  World  has 
enlivened  the  declining  art  of  music. 

But,  apart  from  these  distressing  orchestral 
effects  and  a  somewhat  disjointed  series  of  staccato 
notes  which  leave  one  with  the  misleading  impression 
that  Mr.  Pound's  shirt-cuffs  have  been  sent  to  the 
printer  instead  of  to  the  laundress,  there  is  an 
admirable  residuum  of  hard,  if  somewhat  loose- 
limbed  thinking.  The  Little  Reviewers  have  worked 
conscientiously  over  the  whole  splendid  ground, 
and  one's  only  complaint  must  be  that,  confronted 
with  the  body  of  an  author's  completed  works, 
they  profess  almost  to  a  man  to  see  the  deepest 
significance  in  the  fragments  :  it  is  a  bad  habit 
which  they  may  have  learnt  from  some  of  our 
Grecians.  And  having  in  this  manner  established 
their  reputation  as  earnest  scholars,  they  proceed 
to  maintain  it  by  passing  almost  completely  over 
the  humour  of  Henry  James.  There  is  that  splen- 
did spoof  account  in  The  American  Scerie  of  how 
the  United  States  came  to  be  started  because  of 
the  peculiar  aptness  of  the  fittings  and  fixtures 
of  a  room  in  Philadelphia  for  some  such  occasion  : 

"  One  fancies,  under  the  high  spring  of  the 
ceiling  and  before  the  great  embrasured  window- 


SOME      CRITICS  45 

sashes  of  the  principal  room,  some  clever 
man  of  the  period,  after  a  long  look  round, 
taking  the  hint.  '  What  an  admirable  place 
for  a  Declaration  of  something  !  What  could 
one  here — what  couldn't  one  really  declare  ?  ' 
And  then,  after  a  moment :  '  I  say  why  not 
our  Independence  ? — capital  thing  always  to 
declare,  and  before  any  one  gets  in  with  any- 
thing tactless.  You'll  see  that  the  fortune 
of  the  place  will  be  made.'  " 

Henry  James  initiating  the  American  Revolu- 
tion on  grounds  of  pure  upholstery  is  a  magnificent 
picture,  although  one  realizes  how  offensive  it  must 
be  to  Mr.  Pound,  who  is  continually  anathematizing 
his  "  dam'd  fuss  about  furniture."  Indeed,  it 
is  a  bias  against  the  "  minor  mundanities,"  and 
the  tendency  to  "  conspuer  .  .  .  Henry  James' 
concern  with  furniture,  the  Spoils  of  Poynton, 
connoisseurship,  Mrs.  Ward's  tea-party  atmo- 
sphere, the  young  Bostonian  of  the  immature 
novels,"  that  seems  to  have  led  these  students 
into  their  gravest  critical  error.  The  work  of  the 
middle  James  in  the  years  between  1889  and  1900 
is  dismissed  with  an  intellectual  curse  as  "  this 
entoilment  in  the  Yellow  Book,  short  sentences, 
and  the  epigrammatic."  It  is  a  pity,  because 
to  another  judgment  it  appears  his  best. 

The  work  of  Henry  James  has  always  seemed 
divisible  by  a  simple  dynastic  arrangement  into 
three  reigns :  James  I,  James  II,  and  the  Old 
Pretender.  It  is  perhaps  inevitable  that  the  most 
bigoted  Jacobites  should  cling  closest  to  the  Old 
Pretender ;    but  whilst  one  applauds  their  loyalty, 


46  SUPERS 


one  can  hardly  defer  to  those  critics  who  prefer 
the  splendid  rococo  of  the  decadence  to  the  rich 
purity  of  the  prime.  Strikingly  small  in  number 
are  the  adherents  of  James  I,  a  simple  cultured 
monarch  ruling  over  a  kingdom  which  must  have 
consisted  principally  of  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  because 
it  was  bounded  on  the  East  by  Paris  and  on  the 
West  by  Back  Bay.  In  the  next  reign  the  King 
handled  his  sceptre  of  language  with  a  perfect 
control  of  his  subjects  and  of  the  treatment  which 
he  royally  accorded  to  them.  With  the  discovery 
by  James  of  the  fatal  art  of  dictation  about  the 
year  of  Queen  Victoria's  second  Jubilee,  he  passed 
into  history  and  the  throne  was  claimed  by  the 
Old  Pretender.  He  was  the  most  engaging  claimant 
that  had  ever  planned  a  descent  on  England,  but 
his  career,  as  one  reads  it,  was  a  long  struggle  to 
get  back  to  something  that  he  had  somehow, 
somewhere  lost ;  it  was  the  art  of  his  predecessors, 
the  deft  and  gracious  handling  of  English  words 
for  the  rendering  of  transparent  thought,  and 
it  is  with  something  more  than  a  desire  to  irritate 
Mr.  Pound  (and  perhaps  also  Sir  Edward  Carson) 
that  one  may  say  that  the  greatest  of  the  three 
was  James  II. 


SOME    FRENCHMEN 

IT  was  the  discovery  of  Laurence  Sterne  in  the 
year  1707  that  they  order  this  matter  better 
in  France.  Since  the  throne  of  St.  Louis  was 
occupied  at  the  moment  by  Louis  XV,  the  remark 
was  probably  inappHcable  to  anything  except 
furniture  and  dance-music.  But  the  reverend 
gentleman  having  omitted  to  state  to  which  of 
those  absorbing  branches  of  human  activity  his 
comment  was  addressed,  it  has  been  appropriated 
since  his  lamented  death  by  the  whole  heavenly  host 
of  critics  and  appUed  by  them  to  every  achievement 
of  the  mind  of  man  from  a  rational  system  of 
registering  heavy  luggage  to  the  more  laborious 
businesses  of  poetic  drama  and  the  manufacture  of 
field  artillery.  The  observation  has  become  one 
of  the  most  golden  items  in  our  national  treasury 
of  misquotations,  and  perhaps  it  may  serve  as  a 
convenient  summary  of  that  general  appreciation 
of  French  effort  which  became  common  in  the 
United  Kingdom  after  Lord  Lansdowne  had  inaugu- 
rated the  Entente  Cordiale  of  1904. 

For  six  centuries  the  Englishman  had  re- 
garded his  cross-Channel  neighbours  with  that 
settled  and  gloomy  disgust  which  is  congenial 
to  his  simple  nature.  Their  manufactures  were 
usually  designated  as  kickshaws,  their  diet  was 
believed  to  consist  exclusively  of  the  lesser  molluscs 

47 


48  SUPERS 


and  reptilians,  and  they  wore  the  most  preposterous 
hats.  It  was  never  known  for  certain,  but  it 
was  darkly  whispered  that  they  killed  foxes  with 
the  bullet  rather  than  with  the  dog ;  and  their 
language  was  apparently  composed  of  what 
Mr.  Kipling  has  elegantly  described  as  doodeladays. 
But  this  genial  view,  which  had  held  the  field 
since  the  reign  of  Edward  III,  was  exorcised  in 
less  than  six  months  in  the  reign  of  Edward  VII 
by  a  diplomatic  arrangement  relating  to  some 
fisheries  off  Newfoundland  and  some  rookeries 
in  North  Africa.  It  was  discovered  in  this 
country,  as  the  Egyptian  question  disappeared 
from  the  contested  area  of  international  politics, 
that  the  Frenchman  Had  Points.  He  was 
observed,  after  all,  to  be  a  solid  fellow  with 
many  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  virtues.  Mr.  Imre 
Kiralfy  gave  an  eloquent  expression  to  the  idea 
by  making  a  nightmare  in  stucco  out  of  a  goods- 
yard  in  Shepherds  Bush.  The  Entente  found  a 
suburb  plaster  and  left  it  plaster  of  Paris,  and  the 
people  of  England  began  to  learn  French. 

From  such  small  beginnings  the  French  move- 
ment in  these  islands  grew  to  imposing  proportions, 
and  when  the  outbreak  of  war  found  Great  Britain 
ranged  alongside  of  France,  British  opinion  was 
prepared  for  a  generous  appreciation  of  its  ally. 
The  organized  endeavour  of  a  Latin  race  became 
the  model  of  English  statesmanship,  and  to  the 
profound  surprise  of  some  of  us,  who  had  been 
preaching  it  in  partibus  infidelium  for  a  decade, 
the  recovery  of  Alsace-Lorraine  was  promoted  to 
be  an  object  of  national  anxiety.  The  loyalty  of 
the  Tailor  and  Cutter  to   its  allies    survived  the 


SOME       FRENCHMEN         49 

yachting-cap  which  M.  Poincare  wore  with  knicker- 
bockers during  a  memorable  visit  to  the  Western 
Front,  and  the  superiority  of  the  French  artillery, 
which  one  had  suspected  when  Bombardier  Wells 
succumbed  to  Carpentier  in  the  weeks  preceding 
the  war,  became  a  commonplace  of  military 
criticism.  In  fine,  France  and  all  her  works  were 
very  properly  received  with  a  strong  and  sudden 
gust  of  acclamation,  which  would  inevitably  remind 
Mr.  Chesterton  of  nothing  so  much  as  trumpets. 
This  revolution  was  even  more  sweeping  than 
that  introduced  about  the  same  time  in  artistic 
perspective  by  M.  Mestrovic  when  that  eminent 
Serb,  adopting  the  somewhat  colloquial  interpre- 
tation of  a  bust  as  being  something  which  from  all 
appearances  has  burst,  provoked  the  more  con- 
servative elements  in  English  criticism  to  ex- 
press a  fervent  hope  that  Britons  never  will  be 
Slavs. 

This  temper  of  appreciation  of  France  was, 
like  all  belated  praise,  somewhat  uncritical ; 
its  compliments  were  all  sincere  and  nearly  all 
deserved,  but  it  was  sometimes  a  trifle  undiscerning. 
France  is  (and  had  been  before  the  fact  was  noticed 
in  the  London  newspapers)  the  most  civilized 
country  in  Europe.  If  the  intelligent  man  of 
any  period  wished  to  know  what  Europe  would  be 
like  in  fifty  years'  time,  he  had  only  to  look  at 
the  France  of  his  day.  But  it  is,  perhaps,  a 
misfortune  that  one  had  to  go  to  war  with  the 
Germans  in  order  to  discover  a  platitude  about 
the    French. 

By  a  stroke  of  delicious  irony  Mr.  Kipling  also 
was  among  the  prophets.     It  is  a  fact  of  almost 

4 


50  SUPERS 


international  significance  that  the  high-priest  of 
the  Anglo-Saxon  race  brouglii  himself  to  swing 
a  censer  before  the  Goddess  of  Reason,  and  it 
should  be  said  for  praise  that  he  swung  it  very 
gracefully.  Mr.  Kipling,  who  had  risen  to  a 
position  of  more  than  laureated  eminence  by  the 
possession  of  an  Imperial  Eye  and  the  use 
of  the  word  "  gadgets  ",  discovered  the  French. 
It  should  be  said  in  fairness  to  that  intelhgent 
people  that  it  is  some  considerable  time  since  the 
French  discovered  Mr.  Kipling.  His  notes  on  the 
French  Army  were  put  together  in  a  pamphlet,  and 
his  skilled  observation  combined  with  an  exact 
and  bitter  appreciation  of  the  nature  of  war  to 
produce  something  more  and  better  than  mere  war- 
correspondence.  It  is  characteristic  that  his  chief 
regret  during  a  visit  to  the  Western  Front  was 
an  ignorance  of  French  slang,  which  debarred 
him  from  any  grasp  of  current  mihtary  "  shop." 
Mr.  Kipling  has  always  counted  among  his  gifts 
a  genius  for  admiration.  Sometimes  he  has  admired 
things  that  are  not  admirable ;  but  when  this 
power  was  directed,  as  in  the  present  case,  upon 
a  worthy  object,  the  result  was  entirely  satisfactory. 
The  French  people  at  war  was  admired  in  a  manner 
in  which  Mr.  Belloc,  if  he  had  not  been  otherwise 
engaged,  might  have  admired  it : 

*'  It  is  a  people  possessed  of  the  precedent 
and  tradition  of  war  for  existence,  accustomed 
to  hard  living  and  hard  labour,  sanely 
economical  by  temperament,  logical  by  train- 
ing, and  ilkmiined  and  transfigured  by  their 
resolve  and  endurance." 


SOME      FRENCHMEN         51 

That  is  a  tone  of  self-respecting  friendship  which 
is  infinitely  preferable  to  the  rather  shrill  invective 
with  which  the  contemporary  Mr.  Kipling  excori- 
ated the  Hun.  Talk  about  "  animals  "  and  '*  the 
Beast  "  reminded  one  inevitably  that  no  military 
damage  is  done  by  "  kilhng  Kruger  with  your 
mouth."  His  visit  to  the  Vosges  was  crowded 
with  the  detail  of  mountain  warfare,  and  he 
drew  with  a  loving  and  familiar  pen  "  the  same 
observation-post,  table-map,  observer,  and  tele- 
phonist ;  the  same  always-hidden,  always-ready 
guns  ;  and  the  same  vexed  foreshore  of  trenches, 
smoking  and  shaking,  from  Switzerland  to  the 
sea."  But  his  generous  appreciation  of  the  French 
w^as  marred  by  one  singular  error.  Mr.  Kipling 
reconciled  his  present  praise  with  his  past  neglect 
of  the  French  by  a  rather  questionable  theory 
that  the  war  changed  their  psychology,  and  in 
order  to  emphasize  this  transformation  he  ex- 
aggerated their  ruthlessness  until  he  has  almost 
come  to  credit  his  allies  with  the  worst  qualities 
of  their  enemy.  It  is  ungracious,  when  he  is 
portraying  Marianne,  merely  to  hold  the  mirror 
up  to  Nietzsche,  and  it  is  almost  disloyal,  when  he 
is  describing  the  French  temper,  to  talk  Boche. 

The  true  temper  of  the  French  is  more  easily 
discoverable  in  a  view  of  the  whole  record  of 
France  than  in  a  sketch,  however  expert  and 
however  intimate,  of  the  French  trenches.  The 
Third  Republic  at  war  was  an  inspiring  spectacle 
of  logical  and  organized  democracy,  but  the  ex- 
planation of  its  qualities  is  to  be  sought  rather 
in  the  past  than  in  the  present.  The  tone  of 
the    French    armies    was    derived    less    from    the 


52  SUPERS 


foundling  constitution  of  1875,  which  history  has 
fathered  upon  M.  Wallon,  than  from  the  great 
days  of  the  Monarchy,  the  First  Repubhc,  and 
the  First  Empire.  That  tone  had  been  tempered 
by  France's  loss  of  her  illusions.  There  was  no 
appetite  in  those  days  of  effort  for  gloire,  the  gadfly 
of  all  mad  policies,  because  it  had  been  discovered 
in  1815  that  armies  which  marched  into  Berlin 
and  ^Moscow  and  Vienna  merely  provoke  other 
armies  to  march  into  Lille  and  Nancy  and  Paris. 
There  is  little  taste  for  Csesarism  and  hero-worship, 
because,  as  M.  Hanotaux  has  written,  France  is 
cured  of  individuals  and  Utopias.  The  French 
are  a  modern  people ;  and  the  spectacle  of  a 
modern  people  at  war  is  only  less  splendid  than 
the  spectacle  of  a  modern  people  at  peace.  But 
the  more  modern  a  people  is,  the  more  closely 
and  clearly  does  it  derive  from  its  ancestors.  That 
is  Avhy  the  study  of  French  history  is  essential  to 
any  man  who  wishes  to  understand  French  politics. 
The  English,  who  are  rarely  diffident  in  writing 
upon  their  neighbours,  have  attempted  with 
singular  rarity  to  write  the  story  of  France.  The 
First  Empire,  of  whose  bric-d-brac  they  are  passion- 
ate collectors,  has  produced  nothing  among  them 
beyond  a  mediocre  biography,  and  the  remainder 
of  French  history  has  been  treated  as  a  somewhat 
barren  field  peopled  only  by  the  Scottish  Jacobins 
of  Thomas  Carlyle  and  several  historical  characters 
of  sinister  appearance  impersonated  by  the  late 
Sir  Henry  Irving.  It  is  unfortunate  ;  because  just 
as  the  history  of  Italy  is  the  history  of  European 
art  and  the  history  of  England  is  the  history 
of  European  expansion,  so  the  history  of  France 


SOME       FRENCHMEN         53 

is  in  the  fullest  sense  the  history  of  European 
policy.  Every  movement  which  has  resulted  in 
the  transformation  of  European  states  has  radiated 
from  or  converged  upon  the  city  of  Paris  ;  even 
a  British  diplomat  knows  French. 

The  French  line  from  Arras  to  the  Alsatian 
pine-trees  was  a  long  scroll  upon  which  the  whole  of 
French  history  was  written  ;  there  was  the  thrifty 
statecraft  which  had  added  one  field  to  another 
until  the  lord  of  Paris  became  the  King  of  France, 
the  slow  effort  of  the  lunge  which  drove  the  French 
frontier  nearer  and  nearer  to  the  Rhine,  and  the 
splendid  makeshifts,  as  Victor  Hugo  called  them, 
of  the  Revolution,  which  swept  the  kings  over 
the  border  and  the  flag  of  the  Republic  after  them. 
France  is  no  novice  at  the  game  of  European 
war  ;  it  is  a  long  story,  which  begins  in  anthropo- 
logy and  ends  with  the  White  Paper  of  Sir  Edward 
Grey. 

There  was  once  a  British  historian  of  the  French 
whose  facts  were  accurate  and  well-arranged,  his 
military  (and  especially  his  Napoleonic)  history 
intelligible,  and  his  manner  as  detached  as  a 
proletarian  shirt-cuff.  But  he  succumbed  to  an 
astonishing  assertion  about  the  Frenchman's 
"  lack  of  a  historical  sense,"  in  a  country  where 
every  candidate  for  Parliament  can  talk  for  days 
about  the  principes  de  1789,  and  will  on  the 
smallest  provocation  describe  his  adversary  as 
a  patriote  An  II.  or  a  vieille  barbe  de  1848.  One 
can  hardly  imagine  an  Englishman  taunting  a 
reactionary  with  the  fate  of  Monmouth's  army 
at  Sedgemoor,  but  the  French  democrat  will  tell 
him  about  the  armee  de  Conde  as  soon  as  look  at 


54  SUPERS 


him  :  one  might  as  well  rebuke  an  Ulsterman  for 
his  ignorance  of  the  public  career  of  William  III. 

A  more  serious  fault  in  the  average  French 
history  is  that  it  generally  ends  in  the  year  1871. 
After  an  admirably  balanced  narrative,  in  which 
one  sees  the  characters  of  the  present  scene 
assembling  in  the  wings,  the  historian  rings  down 
the  curtain  at  the  Treaty  of  Frankfort.  Now 
the  history  of  France,  unlike  the  History  of  France, 
does  not  leave  off  in  1871  ;  vixere  fortes  post 
AgomemnoTha,  as  Horace  almost  said.  Although 
the  pubhc  appearances  of  M.  Grevy  were  less 
impressive  than  the  epiphany  of  Napoleon,  the 
Third  Republic  is  far  more  important  to  all  of 
us  than  the  First  Empire.  To  leave  one's  know- 
ledge of  France  with  the  provisional  Presidency 
of  M.  Thiers  is  to  produce  a  completely  false 
impression.  It  may  be  unattractive  for  the 
historian  to  descend  from  the  windy  heights  of 
Napoleonic  diplomacy  to  the  mares  stagnantes  of 
Parliamentary  history.  There  is  something 
unheroic  about  the  dictature  de  M.  Joseph  Prud- 
homme :  and  politicians  with  the  appearance  of 
head-waiters  are  dull  company,  even  if  they 
speak  with  the  tongues  of  angels.  But  it  remains 
true  that  our  late  Allies  were  not  lit  on  their  way 
to  war  by  the  blazing  torches  of  the  Revolution 
or  the  flaring  gas-jets  of  the  Second  Empire, 
but  they  chose  their  path  with  foresight  and  they 
walked  it  with  caution  under  the  mild  light  of 
the  Republique  athenienne.  The  history  of  the 
Third  Republic  is  the  last  and  most  vital  chapter 
in  the  history  of  France. 

The  curious  thing  about  history  is  that  it  really 
happened  :    some  of  it  is  happening  now. 


SOME    MORE    FRENCHMEN 

AN  Englishman  is  a  man  who  hves  on  an 
island  in  the  North  Sea  governed  by  Scots- 
men ;  that  is  why  it  is  called  self-governing.  His 
occupations  are  simple,  but  absorbing.  In  the  in- 
tervals of  earning  money  he  practises  (or  preaches) 
the  family  virtues,  reads  (for  the  duration  of  the 
war)  twenty-five  newspapers  in  the  week,  and 
regards  his  weather,  his  relations,  and  his  Govern- 
ment with  a  settled  disgust.  As  the  result,  possibly, 
of  an  indifferent  climate  he  is  a  person  of  somewhat 
slow  perception.  With  regard  to  persons  of 
importance  he  makes  it  a  rule  never  to  notice 
them  until  they  are  dead,  and  with  regard  to 
countries  his  practice  is,  thanks  to  his  classical 
education,  much  the  same. 

Thus  in  the  eighteenth  century  any  gentleman 
could  tell  you  all  about  the  Greek  Republics  and 
the  Roman  Empire,  but  nobody  in  England, 
except  Edmund  Burke  and  the  Earl  of  Chatham, 
was  aware  of  the  existence  of  its  thirteen  North 
American  colonies,  until  they  very  pardonably 
revolted  in  order  to  remind  the  Englishman  that 
they  were  still  where  he  had  put  them.  He  had 
not  noticed  in  the  nineteenth  century  that  he 
possessed  a  considerable  Empire  overseas,  until 
the  fact  was  discovered  for  him  by  Lord  Beacons- 
field  and  emphasized  by  Mr.  Chamberlain. 

65 


50  SUPERS 


And,  so  recently  as  August  1914,  he  made  the 
startling  discovery  that  he  lived  next  door  to 
Europe.  It  may  be  that,  as  we  discovered  the 
British  Empire  in  the  last  century,  so  in  the 
twentieth  century  we  shall  discover  Europe.  In 
this  age  of  science  all  things  are  possible. 

To  the  Englishman  his  island  is  a  piece  of  land 
entirely  surrounded  by  foreigners.  The  majority 
of  these  people  are  believed  to  live  in  a  continent 
lying  off  the  mouth  of  the  Thames  and  known 
as  Europe.  Certain  parts  of  it,  as,  for  example, 
the  Swiss  mountains,  the  French  Riviera,  and 
the  Italian  picture  galleries,  are  reserved  for  the 
holidays  of  Englishmen ;  but  the  remainder  is 
entirely  given  up  to  foreigners.  These  foreigners, 
it  has  been  observed  by  Englishmen  who  have 
ventured  among  them,  differ  in  degree  but  not 
in  kind.  They  are  marked  in  every  instance  by 
an  obstinate  refusal  to  converse  in  English. 
This  unreasonable  objection  compels  the  Enghsh- 
man  to  toy  lightly  (or  painfully)  with  the  various 
absurd  languages  which  they  use  among  themselves. 

Before  the  war  the  Englishman  recognized 
several  distinct  species  of  foreigners.  There  were 
the  Germans,  a  peaceful  people  devoted  to  music, 
philosophy,  and  wood  carving,  who  were  reported 
recently  to  have  directed  their  energies  into  the 
path  of  commerce  ;  these  could  be  distinguished 
by  an  inability  to  pronounce  the  letter  "  w " 
and  the  universal  wearing  of  spectacles. 

Then  there  was  the  dark-haired  foreigner  of 
the  Mediterranean  ;  if  he  was  playing  the  guitar, 
fighting  bulls,  or  asleep,  you  knew  him  for  a 
Spaniard,  but  if  he  divided  his  time  between  the 


SOME       MORE       FRENCHMEN      57 


tenor  parts  in  opera  and  the  precarious  art  of 
eating  macaroni,  he  was  an  Itahan.  Then  there 
was  the  Russian,  whom  you  could  always  tell 
by  his  knout,  his  fur  hat,  and  the  cigar-cases 
which  were  apparently  attached  to  the  outside  of 
his  clothes.  But  above  all  there  was  the  French- 
man, who  was  the  foreigner  par  excellence. 

Five  centuries  of  Anglo-French  hostility  had 
gone  to  the  making  of  our  imaginary  Frenchman, 
before  the  Lansdowne  Convention  of  1904  ended 
him  once  and  for  all.  He  was  a  magnificent 
creature.  Because  in  the  eighteenth  century 
beef-eating  England  fought  France  for  the 
control  of  India  and  North  America,  and 
noticed  that  its  enemy  was  a  trifle  unorthodox 
in  his  hors  d'ceuvres,  we  were  all  brought  up  to 
believe  that  Frenchmen  lived  exclusively  upon 
frogs.  And  because  at  the  end  of  that  century 
France  crusaded  against  Europe  in  the  high  name 
of  the  French  Revolution,  every  Englishman 
was  given  to  understand  that  every  Frenchman 
was  a  gesticulating  jackanapes  with  a  farcical 
falsetto. 

The  generation  of  the  late  Prince  Albert  regarded 
the  generation  of  Napoleon  III  as  a  shocking 
blend  of  Popery  and  the  gay  life ;  and  because 
the  sporting  England  of  Queen  Victoria  could 
never  understand  the  unathletic  France  of  President 
Thiers,  we  have  all  in  our  time  conjured  up 
delightful  visions  of  legions  of  little  Frenchmen 
in  flat-brimmed  silk  hats  going  fox-shooting  with 
packs  of  poodles.  No  picture  of  hfe  in  Calais 
was  too  ludicrous  to  be  beheved  in  Dover  ;  that  is 
one  of  the  advantages  of  being  an  Island  Race. 


58  SUPERS 


It  is  almost  impossible  to  analyse  the  causes  of 
such  national  mistakes  ;  when  a  whole  race  goes 
wrong,  it  is  not  simple  to  find  the  first  blunder. 
After  all,  nobody  ever  did  understand  his  neigh- 
bours ;  one  misinterprets  the  proceedings  of  the 
man  next  door  simply  because  he  is  the  man 
next  door. 

P'ingland  was  at  fault  in  its  reading  of  France 
because  from  1360  until  1904  it  regarded  France 
with  the  eyes  of  an  enemy.  This  hostility  was 
interrupted  by  an  interval  in  the  reign  of 
Elizabeth,  a  second  interval  in  the  reign  of 
Charles  II,  and  a  third  interval  under  the 
government  of  Walpole.  But  in  the  main  it  is 
true  to  say  that  England  and  France  had  been 
enemies  from  the  reign  of  Edward  III  to  the 
reign  of  Edward  VII.  There  were  periods  when 
the  exigencies  of  foreign  policy  dictated  an  entente^ 
and  diplomacy  did  its  best  to  unite  the  two 
countries ;  but  it  was  a  friendship  of  govern- 
ments, and  the  individual  Englishman  was  never 
the  friend  of  the  individual  Frenchman.  Now 
you  never  understand  your  enemy ;  possibly 
that  is  why  he  is  your  enemy. 

But  it  must  not  be  thought  that  England  alone 
was  guilty  of  errors  of  this  type.  France  in  its 
time  has  misread  England  almost  as  completely 
as  England  has  misread  France.  It  is  probably 
untrue  that  on  this  island  we  travel  through  a 
darkness  of  perpetual  fogs  to  buy  our  wives  by 
pubhc  auction  at  Smithfield.  But  until  ten  years 
ago  these  stimulating  facts  as  to  our  climate  and 
habits  were  articles  of  faith  with  Frenchmen  of 
intelligence ;      that    is    the    French    error    about 


SOME       MORE       FRENCHMEN      59 


England.  It  was  equally  untrue  that  France  had 
lived  for  the  past  forty  years  so  entirely  in  the 
nightmare  memory  of  the  Annee  Terrible  that 
French  politicians  would  resent  no  insult  and 
French  soldiers  could  resist  no  onset ;  that  was 
the  German  error  about  France. 

The  British  error  about  France  came  from  two 
causes  :  a  failure  to  appreciate  the  truth  about 
French  history  and  an  inability  to  observe  the 
truth  about  the  France  that  is  living  under  our 
eyes.  When  British  opinion  is  set  right  about 
the  past  of  France,  it  will  be  in  a  position  to  see 
straight  about  its  present.  But  until  it  can  get 
both  of  these  things  into  a  true  perspective,  it 
will  continue  to  make  itself  ridiculous  whenever 
it  thinks  of  a  Frenchman. 

The  first  fallacy  about  the  French  is  that  they 
are  frivolous.  This  illusion  takes  two  forms, 
each  of  which  is  extremely  popular  in  England  : 
a  belief  that  the  French  are  Hght-headed  in  their 
public  life  and  light-mmded  in  their  private  hfe. 

Now  the  whole  error  with  regard  to  French 
pontics  is  probably  derived  from  a  misreading 
of  the  French  Revolution.  That  group  of  events, 
which  is  generally  beheved  to  have  consisted  of 
an  impulsive  attack  upon  the  Bastille,  followed 
by  an  orgy  of  promiscuous  decapitation,  was  in 
reality  a  solemn  and  progressive  movement  by 
which  the  society  and  government  of  France 
were  reconstructed  from  top  to  bottom.  It 
resulted  from  the  accident  that  the  reformers 
began  at  the  top  that  they  were  compelled  to 
cut  off  heads,  but  the  Revolution  itself  was  an 
effort  of  the  whole  population,   directed  by  men 


60  SUPERS 


of  the  professional  class,  against  a  discredited 
system  of  government  and  aristocratic  privilege. 
The  solemnity  of  the  Revolution  was  consistent 
with  the  complete  seriousness  of  the  nation  which 
had  produced  the  Huguenots  and  was  yet  to 
produce    the    Third    Republic. 

The  Third  Republic,  by  which  France  has  been 
governed  since  1870,  is  the  most  serious  govern- 
ment in  Europe.  It  is  no  evidence  of  light- 
mindedness  that  Frenchmen  have  occasionally 
demonstrated  their  sincere  preference  for  the 
republican  form  of  government  by  dying  for  it 
on  barricades.  There  is  nothing  flippant  about 
street-fighting,  and  Tennyson  was  never  farther 
from  intelligence  than  when  he  delighted  the 
subjects  of  Queen  Victoria  by  a  reference  to  "  The 
red   fool-fury   of  the  Seine." 

It  is  true  that  in  the  beginning  and  middle  of 
the  last  century  Frenchmen  showed  a  general 
uncertainty  as  to  the  precise  form  of  government 
which  they  proposed  to  retain,  but  for  fifty 
years  they  have  retained  the  Republic. 

The  French  Republic  has  no  meretricious  attrac- 
tions ;  its  army  has  no  dress  uniform  except  the 
uniform  in  which  it  fights  ;  its  waiters  (and  even 
its  head-waiters)  wear  the  same  clothes  as  its 
politicians  (and  even  its  President) ;  and  the 
corps  d'elite,  which  had  been  the  military  pride 
of  the  Second  Empire,  were  abolished  in  the  first 
military   reorganization   of  the   Republic. 

France,  which  the  good  Englishman  believes 
to  live  perpetual  French  farces  as  it  revolves 
riotously  round  "  Gay  Paree,"  is  the  most  serious 
country   west   of  China.     Its   Trade   Unionism    is 


SOME      MORE       F  R  E  N  C  II  IVI  E  N      61 

fifty  years  ahead  of  the  rest  of  Europe  ;  its  inventors 
showed  us  the  way  to  the  motor-car,  the  aeroplane, 
and  the  submarine ;  and  its  genius  is  for  the 
organization  of  peace. 

But  its  army  was  the  most  modern  and  the 
most  silent  fighting  force  on  the  Continent.  One 
found  in  the  little  fortress-towns  of  Eastern  France 
little  taste  for  the  old  shows  of  war.  In  the  streets 
every  man  was  a  soldier,  because  one  had  to  have 
soldiers  ;  and  in  the  country  every  hill  top  was 
a  gun-platform,  because  one  had  to  have  guns. 

That  is  the  military  temper  of  modern  France  : 
it  does  not  set  much  store  by  glory,  and  it  has 
changed  so  much  since  its  armies  swept  light- 
heartedly  out  into  Europe  on  the  first  wave  of 
the  Revolution.  Because  France  is  civilized  and 
because  it  is  rich,  France  is  a  peaceful  country, 
and  when  a  country  fights  for  peace  it  makes 
war  with  a  hope  that  wins  battles. 

Modern  France  is  neither  a  drill  ground  nor 
a  play  ground.  It  is  a  great  economic  State 
alive  with  the  enterprise  which  has  built  up  the 
industries  of  its  north  and  the  agriculture  of  its 
centre,  veined  closely  with  fines  of  railway  and 
canal,  and  playing  a  leading  part  in  the  commercial 
life  of  Europe. 

That  is  the  France  which  Englishmen  discovered 
with  a  shock  of  surprise  in  the  hot  weather  of 
1914.  It  is  a  discovery  which  will  affect  more 
than  a  single  war  or  a  single  generation,  because 
geography  has  made  the  co-operation  of  England 
and  France  in  Western  Europe  as  natural  and 
inevitable  as  the  co-operation  of  Germany  and 
Austria  in  Central  Europe. 


62  SUPERS 


The  discovery  of  France  was  something  more 
than  a  discovery  of  an  ally  against  Germany ; 
it  was  the  discovery  of  a  neighbom-  whom  England 
had  not  known  for  six  centuries  and  by  whom 
England  will  live  in  an  exchange  of  all  that  is 
most  valuable  in  both  countries  for  more  than 
the  time  of  any  man  now  living. 


SOME    ZIONISTS 

NATIONALISTS,  like  most  lovers  and  all 
idealists,  are  apt  to  be  a  trifle  ridiculous 
in  public.  There  is  something  about  a  political 
grand  passion  that  seems  to  suspend  a  man,  like 
the  Prophet's  coffin,  somewhere  between  the 
sublime  and  the  ridiculous,  and  there  is  in  most 
cases  no  help  for  it.  One  must  resign  oneself  to 
the  splendid  absurdity  of  the  devotee.  Romeo  on 
the  balcony,  Mrs.  Micawber  reiterating  her  refusal 
ever  to  desert  her  husband,  Robert  Bruce's  ill- 
timed  passion  for  entomology,  and  Garibaldi  freeing 
Italy  in  a  four-wheeler,  all  fall,  if  one  tilts  the 
picture  ever  so  little,  into  the  faintly  ludicrous 
attitudes  of  persons  in  the  grip  of  strong  emotions. 
Any  nationalist,  whether  the  object  of  his  affections 
is  Achill  Island  or  the  Banat  of  Temesvar,  is  sub- 
ject to  this  engaging  failing.  He  is,  like  that 
impersonator  of  Hamlet  (now,  alas  !  no  more), 
who  could  be  funny  without  being  vulgar,  most 
entertaining  when  his  endeavour  is  to  be  most 
impressive. 

But  in  all  the  rollicking,  carnival  procession  of 
Donnybrook  nationalists,  frankly  farcical  irreden- 
tists, and  patriots  pour  7'ire,  there  is  one  grim  and 
sad-coloured  exception.  A  single  national  move- 
ment of  our  time  is  insusceptible  of  entertainment, 
from  whatever  angle  of  wit  or  malice  it  may  be 

63 


64  SUPERS 


regarded ;  even  the  peerless  lanee  of  Mr.  Max 
Becrbohni  once  splintered  and  broke  against  its 
sombre  armour.  The  patriotism  of  the  Jew — that 
pitiable  affeetion  which  has  no  loved  land  to  gaze 
at — is  an  utterly  solemn  thing.  Perhaps  it  is  so 
because  it  is  so  old  that,  like  a  traditional  funny 
story,  it  has  ceased  to  be  funny,  or  perhaps  because 
by  the  queer  accident  of  Jewish  history  it  happens 
to  be  a  sacred  as  well  as  a  national  thing.  But, 
from  whatever  cause,  it  remains  true  that  the 
Parliament  at  College  Green,  the  ever  Greater 
Serbia,  and  M.  Paderewski's  Polish  concerto  may 
be  full  of  humorous  possibility,  whilst  no  man 
will  dare  to  smile  on  the  grey  day  when  the  long 
line  of  bowed  heads  and  stooping  shoulders  shuffles 
wearily  out  of  the  little  towns  of  Eastern  Europe, 
and  winds  slowly  southward  until  the  leaders  look 
up  and  see  the  sun  over  the  land  of  their  promise 
and  their  deliverance. 

Zionism,  if  one  may  use  the  term  for  a  moment 
without  begging  any  controversial  questions,  is 
one  of  the  few  just  and  sacred  causes  which  the 
war,  like  an  absent-minded  earthquake,  has  moved 
forward  inadvertently  towards  their  splendid  goal. 

Any  narration  of  its  evolution  is  the  historical 
study  of  an  idea.  The  material  side  of  the  move- 
ment has  always  seemed  a  matter  of  the  pro- 
foundest  indifference.  Statistics  of  school  attend- 
ance, of  the  export  of  Jewish-grown  olives  from 
Palestine,  and  of  the  number  of  gallons  of  water 
passed  annually  through  the  restored  system  of 
irrigation  are  bound  to  cut  such  a  pathetic  figure 
next  to  the  splendour  of  the  national  ideal  which 
is  expressed  in  them.     Frankly,  one  is  depressed 


SOME      ZIONISTS  65 

rather  than  impressed  by  information  of  this  type, 
and  it  is  an  infinite  relief  to  escape  from  that  obtru- 
sion of  it  which  is  so  dispiriting  a  feature  of  most 
national  publications. 

Patriots  rarely  excel  in  the  composition  of  reliable 
prospectuses,  and  it  should  be  realized  that  the 
strength  of  nationalists  lies  in  the  legitimate  exer- 
cise of  the  imagination  in  the  sphere  of  eloquence, 
prophecy,  and  the  less  austere  forms  of  poetry, 
but  that  as  map-makers,  mineralogists,  and  com- 
pilers of  racial  statistics  they  tend  to  be  beneath 
contempt.  Their  geese  are  all,  as  Henry  James 
must  have  written  somewhere,  so  quite  magnifi- 
cently swans  that  as  bird-fanciers  they  are  more 
than  a  little  misleading.  Indeed,  there  is  a  wistful 
Mexican  in  one  of  Mr.  Leacock's  stories  whose  cri 
du  cceur  might  have  been  borrowed  by  almost  any 
of  the  "  nations  struggling  to  be  free,"  whose 
energetic  delegates  picketed  the  revolving  doors  of 
the  Hotel  Majestic.  "  Alas,  my  poor  Mexico,"  he 
exclaimed,  "  she  wants  nothing  but  water  to  make 
her  the  most  fertile  country  of  the  globe  !  Water 
and  soil,  these  only,  and  she  would  excel  all  others. 
Give  her  but  water,  soil,  light,  heat,  capital,  and 
labour,  and  what  could  she  not  be  !  "  That  is 
an  entirely  legitimate  travesty  of  what  one  fears 
to  find  on  opening  any  study  of  Zionism  by  any 
leading  Zionist.  The  material  side  of  the  move- 
ment is  as  unimportant  to  most  of  us  as  the 
pigments  of  a  great  picture  or  the  geology  of  the 
Parthenon  frieze.  All  that  matters  is  the  fact  of 
the  movement  itself,  and  the  slow  but  gathering 
momentum  with  which  it  moves. 

The  theme  of  a  great  part  of  the  story  should 

5 


66  SUPERS 


have  a  peculiar  fascination  for  Englishmen.  With- 
out minimizing  unduly  the  effort  of  foreign  com- 
munities and  the  sympathy  of  Continental  thinkers, 
it  seems  to  show  that  the  government  of  England 
has  played  a  full  and  gracious  part  in  the  first 
and  last  scenes  of  the  long  tragedy  of  the  Wandering 
Jew.  Two  and  a  half  centuries  ago  the  Lord 
Protector  in  Council  reversed  the  Act  of  Edward  I 
and  readmitted  the  Jews  to  the  territory  of  the 
English  Republic.  This  response  of  Puritan 
opinion  to  the  Jewish  appeal  was  not  surprising, 
because  at  no  other  time  have  the  English,  or 
indeed  any  other  European  community,  been  more 
pre-eminently  a  people  of  the  Book.  A  govern- 
ment whose  heavy  cavalry  owed  its  victories  to 
the  inspiration  of  Joshua  almost  more  than  to  the 
tactics  of  Gustavus  Adolphus  could  hardly  have 
made  any  other  decision.  But  the  present  interest 
of  it  lies  in  the  queer  Zionist  significance  of  the 
petition  of  Manassch  Ben-Israel  and  David  Abra- 
banel.  It  was  their  belief  that  the  return  to 
Palestine  would  not  be  possible  until  the  world- 
wide scattering  of  the  race  was  complete. 
The  return  to  the  western  islands  was  regarded 
as  the  final  consummation  of  the  Diaspora  :  "  Let 
them  enter  England  and  the  other  end  would  be 
reached."  So  the  last  place  of  exile  was  to  be 
the  first  station  of  the  long  homeward  journey  ; 
and  it  was  made  possible  by  the  Bible  Christianity 
of  the  Commonwealth  of  England. 

And  the  last  chapter  of  the  same  story  was 
written  when  in  the  same  capital  city  of  W^estern 
Europe  and  in  the  closing  months  of  a  European 
war  His  Majesty's  Government  gave  formal  British 


SOME      ZIONISTS  67 

recognition  to  the  Jewish  effort,  speaking  through 
Lord  Robert  Cecil,  in  an  utterance  which  would 
perhaps  have  startled  the  Elizabethan  Lord  Bur- 
leigh considerably  less  than  it  would  have  scan- 
dalized the  Victorian  Lord  Salisbury. 

It  is  impossible  to  summarize  the  story  of  three 
centuries  of  Jewish  and  European  opinion.  The 
record  of  Zionism  is  a  queer  procession  of  widely 
different  figures,  all  starting  from  far  separated 
points  and  each  at  last  converging  into  the  great 
stream  that  drives  south  and  eastward  across  the 
world  towards  the  Holy  Places.  On  the  Jewish 
side  one  sees  the  slow  drift  that  aligned  the  spas- 
modic romanticism  of  Disraeli  with  the  patient 
effort  of  Sir  Moses  Montefiore  and  the  faith  and 
works  of  Pinsker,  Hirsch,  Herzl,  Wolffsohn,  Weiz- 
mann,  and  the  rest ;  whilst  the  movement  reacted 
on  Europe  in  such  odd  forms  as  the  Voltairean 
liberalism  of  Napoleon  and  his  Grand  Sanhedrin, 
Byron's  facile  and  dilettante  Semitism,  and  the 
urbane  offer  by  Lord  Lansdowne  of  a  half-way 
house  in  East  Africa,  upon  which  the  Foreign  Office 
draftsman  was  amiably  prepared  to  confer  "  a  free 
hand  in  regard  to  municipal  legislation  and  to 
the  management  of  religious  and  purely  domestic 
matters." 

The  Foreign  Office  has  learnt  several  lessons 
since  those  quiet  afternoons  in  1903,  and  one  of 
them  stands  out  very  clearly  from  the  note  which 
Mr.  Balfour  once  contributed  to  a  book  on  Zionism. 
His  argument  of  one  part  of  the  Zionist  case  is  a 
thoroughly  skilful  and  attractive  piece  of  writing. 
The  average  preface  of  the  average  statesman  is 
a  pitiable  performance,  because  it  is  so  apt  to  be 


68  SUPERS 


written,  as  Wilde  said  of  Sir  (then  Mr.)  Hall  Caine, 
"  at  the  top  of  his  voice."  Mr.  Balfour's  conver- 
sational manner  has  a  more  level  tone,  and  one 
tends  to  forget  in  the  easy  flow  of  his  talk  that  one 
is  reading  one  of  His  Majesty's  Principal  Secretaries 
of  State  upon  a  question  of  high  British  policy. 
He  faces  frankly  the  deficiencies  of  the  Jewish 
make-up  : — 


"It  is  no  doubt  true  that  in  large  parts  of 
Europe  their  loyalty  to  the  State  in  which 
they  dwell  is  (to  put  it  mildly)  feeble,  com- 
pared with  their  loyalty  to  their  religion  and 
their  race.  How,  indeed,  could  it  be  other- 
wise ?  In  none  of  the  regions  of  which  I 
speak  have  they  been  given  the  advantage  of 
equal  citizenship,  in  some  they  have  been 
given  no  right  of  citizenship  at  all.  ...  It 
may  well  be  true  that  when  they  have  been 
compelled  to  live  among  their  neighbours  as 
if  these  were  their  enemies,  they  have  often 
obtained,  and  sometimes  deserved,  the  repu- 
tation of  being  undesirable  citizens.  Nor  is 
this  surprising.  If  you  oblige  many  men 
to  be  money-lenders,  some  will  assuredly  be 
usurers.  If  you  treat  an  important  section 
of  the  community  as  outcasts,  they  will  hardly 
shine  as  patriots." 

He  puts  with  high  eloquence  the  essence  of  the 
Zionist  case  : — 

"  In  no  other  case  are  the  believers  in  one  of 
the  greatest  religions  of  the  world  to  be  found 
(speaking  broadly)  among  the  members  of  a 


SOME      ZIONISTS  69 

single  small  people  ...  in  the  case  of  no  other 
religion  are  its  aspirations  and  hopes  expressed 
in  language  and  imagery  so  utterly  dependent 
for  their  meaning  on  the  conviction  that  only 
from  this  one  land,  only  through  this  one 
history,  only  by  this  one  people  is  full  religious 
knowledge  to  spread  through  all  the  world." 

And  with  something  of  the  old  dexterity  which 
whitened  the  hair  and  shortened  the  lives  of  the 
early  Tariff  Reformers  he  eludes  the  point  pre- 
sented at  his  breast  by  the  anti-Zionist  opposition, 
by  those  "  who,  though  Jews  by  descent,  and  often 
by  religion,  desire  wholly  to  identify  themselves 
with  the  life  of  the  country  wherein  they  have 
made  their  home.  .  .  .  They  fear  that  it  will 
adversely  affect  their  position  in  the  country  of 
their  adoption.  ...     I  cannot  share  their  fears." 

The  objection  is  one  that  might  have  been  an- 
swered in  a  deeper  tone.  The  fortunate  group 
that  is  in  a  position  to  raise  it  is  the  smallest  portion 
of  a  suffering  race,  and  it  might  well  be  retorted 
upon  them  that  if  by  making  a  few  hundred  more 
aliens  in  London  we  can  purchase  a  few  thousand 
less  graves  in  Poland,  the  price  is  not  too  large. 
For  in  the  last  resort,  if  the  highest  argument  for 
Zionism  is  to  be  found  in  the  prophet  Isaiah,  the 
case  for  it  on  the  narrowest  grounds  is — Kishineff. 


SOME    GERMANS 

WAR,  in  the  considered  judgment  of  the  late 
General  Sherman,  is  Hell.  The  com- 
parison, although  it  begs  an  exciting  question  of 
teleology,  is  vivid  and,  it  would  seem,  just.  There 
are  the  outcries  and  the  fire  and  even,  in  those 
countries  which  enjoy  the  blessings  of  Parliamentary 
institutions,  the  worm.  But  it  is  nowhere  sug- 
gested, either  in  sacred  or  profane  revelation,  that 
the  damned  are  provided  with  appropriate  reading 
matter.  Now  when  a  miscalculation  of  the  Great 
General  Staff  as  to  the  train  service  between  Liege 
and  Paris  sentenced  the  continent  of  Europe  to  a 
trial  by  ordeal,  there  was  added  to  the  physical 
torture  of  war  the  intellectual  torture  of  books 
about  it.  Soldiers,  sailors,  travellers,  and  even 
dons  and  governesses  hastened  to  adapt  the 
peaceful  art  of  stenography  to  the  grim  uses  of 
war,  and  brought  it,  as  they  say,  home  to  those 
suffering  non-combatants  who  were  physically  unfit 
to  run,  but  were  unfortunately  still  able  to  read. 
Literary  men  did  their  Bit  with  the  mechanical 
regularity  of  a  child  saying  its  Piece,  and  the 
cockpit  of  Europe  re-echoed  with  the  sound  of 
innumerable  writers  murmuring  contentedly  *'  Kiss 
me,  Bernhardi  :  at  least  I  have  done  my  duty." 

Other  wars  had   seemed  tolerable  to  the  belli- 
gerents,   because   they   were   happily   ignorant   as 

70 


SOME       GERMANS  71 


to  what  they  were  fighting  about.  In  those  days 
it  was  satisfying  to  die  for  those  princes  of  Europe 
who  were  said  by  a  philosopher  to  "  amuse  their 
own  leisure  and  exercise  the  courage  of  their 
subjects  in  the  practice  of  the  military  art."  But 
a  war  of  ideas  is  about  as  entertaining  as  a  drama 
of  ideas.  It  is  unnatural  to  expect  a  man  to  enjoy 
fighting  with  a  carifion  of  explanation  ringing  in 
his  ears  and  indicating  precisely  why,  how,  where, 
and  with  whom  he  is  desired  to  contend.  One  is 
not  stimulated  to  fight  with  beasts  at  Ephesus  by 
the  gift  of  a  Natural  History  and  a  short  guide  to 
the  neighbourhood  ;  and  it  was  even  less  reasonable 
to  expect  a  footman  to  turn  into  a  foot-soldier 
because  he  had  read  three  Lives  of  Frederick  the 
Great,  The  Love  Letters  of  Helmiith  von  Moltke, 
and  a  colour  book  about  Potsdam.  It  was  per- 
fectly proper  that  the  people  of  England  should 
acquire  elementary  information  on  the  subject  of 
Germany,  whether  they  were  fighting  it  or  not ; 
but  it  was  a  trifle  undignified  to  make  a  European 
war  the  excuse  for  a  gigantic  course  of  University 
Extension. 

One  is  unwilling  to  beheve  that  the  Roman 
parent  in  the  Punic  Wars  was  asked  to  purchase 
The  Confessions  of  Hasdruhal,  or  Hamilcar  and  the 
Women  He  Loved ;  and  it  is  improbable  that  The 
Real  Joan  of  Arc  would  have  found  an  extensive 
sale  among  the  bewildered  subjects  of  Henry  VI. 
When  Xenophon  walked  from  Baghdad  to  the 
Black  Sea,  no  Athenian  bookseller  issued  The  First 
Ten  Thousand ;  and  whilst  Garibaldi  was  conquering 
Calabria  in  a  four-wheeler,  the  NeapoUtans  were 
undisturbed  by  works  upon  Lord  Brougham  and 


72  SUPERS 

his  contributions  to  contemporary  traction.  But 
in  the  past  five  years  these  things  have  been 
paralleled  and  multiplied  beyond  measure,  until 
the  war  is  almost  invisible  under  its  own  biblio- 
graphy. The  frightfulness  of  General  von  Bissing 
was  as  nothing  to  that  of  the  average  English 
book  about  his  country.  The  catalogue  of  German 
wars  has  been  written  down  in  a  manner  that 
recalls  the  irreverent  comment  of  Gibbon  upon 
one  of  his  authorities  :  "  The  coarse  and  undis- 
tinguishing  pencil  of  Ammianus  had  delineated  his 
bloody  figures  with  tedious  and  disgusting  accu- 
racy." One  may  well  regret,  now  that  the  autumn 
of  our  publishing  season  has  deepened  into  the 
winter  of  our  discontent,  that  so  many  persons 
should  have  so  little  to  say  about  Prussia  beyond 
what  is  either  trite  or  Treitschke. 

Literary  critics  have  sometimes  attempted  to 
derive  comfort  from  the  saying  of  Lewis  Carroll 
that  "  the  number  of  lunatic  books  is  as  finite  as 
the  number  of  lunatics,"  and  it  would  be  consoling 
if  one  could  believe  that  the  supply  of  books  on 
Prussia  is  commensurate  with  the  rapidly  diminish- 
ing supply  of  Piiissians.  But  in  default  of  this 
happy  arrangement,  and  failing  a  rational  censor- 
ship of  all  matter  calculated  to  amuse  the  enemy, 
our  only  hope  seems  to  rest  in  the  production  of 
a  definitive  work  which  shall  exhaust  the  subject 
without  exhausting  its  readers.  From  this  point 
of  view  the  University  of  Oxford,  which  combines 
the  study  of  history  with  the  practice  of  politics, 
appears  to  have  done  all  that  is  required  of  it. 
Two  of  the  most  popular  lecturers  in  the  School 
of   Modern    Ilistoiy,    whose    collaboration    was    a 


SOME       GERMANS  73 

pleasing  symptom  of  the  party  truce,  produced  a 
book  which  queered  once  and  for  all  the  Prussian 
pitch.  There  is  no  excuse,  after  the  combined 
labours  of  Messrs.  Marriott  and  Grant  Robertson, 
for  a  continuance  of  the  Saturnalia  of  dancing 
nonsense  that  has  reeled  round  the  makers  of 
Prussia,  since  the  finished  article  committed  the 
supreme  indiscretion  of  taking  the  first  line  of  the 
chorus  of  the  Jingo  song  literally.  One  cannot 
read  this  quiet  and  creditable  piece  of  academic 
history  and  turn  again  to  the  inaccurate  melodrama 
of  its  competitors.  The  Prussian  tradition  was 
not  strikingly  interesting  or  (to  the  foreigner) 
particularly  inspiring ;  but  it  was,  for  what  that  is 
worth,  the  tradition  of  the  enemy.  It  is  at  least  true 
to  say  that  the  last  war  is  almost  the  first  of  English 
wars  in  which  it  has  been  safe  for  Englishmen  to 
study  the  other  side.  If  the  subjects  of  George  III 
had  known  as  much  about  the  French  Revolution 
as  the  subjects  of  George  V  have  lately  learnt  about 
Prussia,  the  Great  War  would  have  come  to  an  un- 
fortunate and  sudden  end  in  the  hard  winter  of  1794. 
The  successive  phases  of  Prussian  history  have 
grown  to  be  almost  painfully  familiar.  One  begins 
with  an  acid  comment  on  the  indifferent  and 
unlovely  quality  of  the  North  German  plain,  and 
one  is  apt  to  forget,  as  that  blasted  heath  comes 
to  appear  the  natural  haunt  of  the  witches  of 
military  brutality  and  political  craft,  that  Niccolo 
Macchiavelli  enjoyed  the  amenities  of  the  Arno. 
In  any  case  European  issues  are  not  decided  by 
questions  of  subsoil  and  top-dressing,  and  it  may 
be  that  the  unfriendliness  of  Nature  has  supphed 
Prussia  with  that  mass  of  stubborn  yokels  which 


74  SUPERS 


was  the  chief  reservoir  of  its  man-power.  One 
passes  direct  by  a  pardonable  transition,  which 
omits  the  mosaic  of  mediaeval  Germany,  to  the 
age  of  Frederick  the  Great,  and  one  castigates  with 
appropriate  severity  his  Silesian  and  Polisli  tran- 
sactions. It  is  usual  to  fix  the  making  of  Prussia 
in  this  eventful  reign  and  by  a  pleasing  symmetry 
to  juxtapose  the  incipium  Borussice  with  the  finis 
Polonice.  The  nineteenth  century  of  Prussian 
history  is  more  varied.  One  opens  with  the 
collapse  and  resurrection  of  the  kingdom  in  face 
of  the  French  between  the  battle  of  Jena  and 
the  battle  of  Leipzig,  and  before  the  inex- 
plicable coma  of  Prussia  in  the  years  between 
1815  and  1848.  One  is  then  at  Hberty  to  study 
at  full  length  the  Prussianization  of  Germany 
by  war,  Zollverein,  and  treaty.  That  process  is 
probably  the  most  significant  fact  in  modern 
Germany,  which  is  now,  as  the  Emperor  Wilham  I 
remarked,  "  an  extended  Prussia."  But  it  was 
preceded  by  a  process  which  is  of  almost  equal 
importance,  but  is  commonly  treated  with  absolute 
neglect.  The  Prussianization  of  Germany  was 
merely  the  inevitable  consequence  of  the  Prus- 
sianization of  Prussia;  and  that  process  was  the 
work  of  a  forgotten  king,  who  has  earned  a  seat 
among  the  Tartaric  "  Thrones,  Dominations, 
Princedoms,  Virtues,  Powers  "  of  the  Prussian 
hierarchy  from  which  neither  Frederick  nor  Bis- 
marck nor  General  von  Bernhardi  himself  should 
displace  him.  Frederick  William  I,  from  whose 
singularly  empty  head  Prussia  sprang  fully  armed, 
has  hardly  made  that  noise  in  the  world  which  he 
deserves.     It   is    significant    that    even    so    careful 


SOME       GERMANS  75 


a  study    as   that  of  Messrs.   Marriott    and    Grant 
Robertson  devotes  fifty  pages  to  the  achievement 
of  Frederick  the  Great  and  barely  ten  to  the  work 
of  Frederick  Wilham,  which  alone  made  it  possible. 
Although  Mr.  Marriott  (or  Mr.  Grant  Robertson) 
admits  that  his  reign  was  *'  the  period  in  which 
all  the  most  unlovely  and  forbidding  qualities  of 
Prussianism    were    scourged    into    the    kingdom," 
Mr.  Grant  Robertson  (or  Mr.  Marriott)  is  permitted 
to  remark  "  two  such  kings  as  Frederick  Wilham  I, 
and  Prussia  would  have  ceased  to  contribute  to 
the  world  anything   but   the   ethics    of  Bridewell 
and  the  lessons  of  the  guard-room  "  :  the  comment 
recalls  the  writings  of  Macaulay  alike  by  its  elo- 
quence and  by  its  inaccuracy.     The  fascination  of 
invective  has  tempted  too  many  writers  to  forget 
that    Frederick    William    made    Prussia.     He   was 
followed  by  Frederick  the  Great  as  inevitably  as 
Philip    of   Macedon    was    followed    by    Alexander. 
As  Phihp  created  the  phalanx,  so  Frederick  Wilham 
created  the  Prussian  infantry.     His   collection  of 
giant   grenadiers   expressed   a  grotesque  taste   for 
human  bric-d-brac,  and  his  grands  soldats  de  parade 
avec  lews  petits  habits  bleus  et  leurs  cheveux  poudres 
a  blanc  entertained  his  contemporaries ;   but  they 
failed  singularly  to  amuse  the  next  generation  in 
the  course  of  the  Seven  Years'  War.     He  created  the 
Prussian   army,   and   even   gave  to   it   a   national 
character  by  assigning  to  every  regiment  a  Prussian 
recruiting   district,    from   which   two-thirds    of  its 
strength  were  drawn  :  the  conception  was  remark- 
able at  a  time  when  every  European  army  was  a 
force  of  paid  (and  often  imported)  pugilists.     On 
the  side  of  civil  administration  Frederick  William 


76  SUPERS 


created  the  centralized  executive  of  the  Prussian 
monarchy  and  baptized  it  with  the  strikingly 
national  title  of  General-Oher-Finanz-Kreigs-und- 
Domainen-Birectorium.  His  remarkable  blend  of 
languages  and  metaphors  {^*  Ich  stabilire  die  Souver- 
ainete  wie  einen  Rocher  von  Bronce''^)  concealed  a 
great  truth ;  in  the  army  and  the  civil  service 
Frederick  William  had  made  the  two  wheels  of  the 
Prussian  machine.  He  Prussianized  Prussia,  and  it 
seems  almost  time  that  somebody  called  him  a  Hun. 
The  Prussianization  of  Germany  is  a  far  simpler, 
if  more  gradual,  process  which  fills  the  later  half 
of  the  nineteenth  century ;  but  its  earlier  years 
are  occupied  by  a  curious  business  which  almost, 
but  not  quite,  succeeded  in  producing  the  Ger- 
manization  of  Prussia.  Between  1815  and  1848 
the  militant  agriculturists  of  Brandenburg  were 
very  nearly  reabsorbed  in  that  German  family 
whose  natural  occupations  are  the  carving  of  wood 
and  the  composition  of  music.  Under  Frederick 
William  IV,  who  almost  justified  PuncWs  accu- 
sations of  habitual  intemperance  by  his  persistent 
attachment  to  the  mediaeval  ideal,  the  Prussian 
almost  became  a  mild-eyed  German  rustic.  But 
the  Liberal  revolution  of  1848  put  an  intolerable 
strain  upon  the  Junker,  and  the  generous  fever 
was  succeeded  by  the  cold  fit  of  Manteuffel,  until 
Bismarck  restored  to  Prussia  the  normal  circulation 
of  its  blood  and  iron.  The  historians  of  Prussia 
have  amused  their  leisure  by  selecting  certain 
figures  as  typical  of  that  kingdom.  One  of  the  most 
popular  for  this  purpose  is  Frederick  the  Great, 
who  is  constantly  decorated  as  an  honour  with  a 
distinction  which   he  would  have  resented  as  an 


SOME       GERMANS  77 

insult.  But  that  cosmopolitan  was  the  man  of  his 
century  rather  than  of  his  country  ;  he  was  equally 
typical  of  France,  of  Austria,  of  Spain,  or  even 
of  England,  because,  in  fact,  he  was  only  typical 
of  the  year  1760.  There  is  a  modern  belief  that 
the  qualities  of  efficiency  and  organization  are  in 
some  way  Prussian,  and  the  attempt  has  been 
made  to  sum  up  the  North  German  character  in 
the  accomplishments  of  its  commercial  magnates. 
But  the  powers  of  industrial  organization  in  time 
of  war,  which  should  have  earned  for  the  ingenious 
Herr  Ballin  the  title  of  the  North  German  Lloyd 
George,  are  hardly  inherited  from  the  Great  Elector, 
and  the  praise  of  them  should  be  attributed  to  a 
somewhat  older  race.  The  truth  is  that  the  busi- 
ness man  is  not  a  national  type  :  Herr  von  Gwin- 
ner's  attachment  is  not  to  the  Old  Mark,  but  to 
the  new  mark.  Commercial  aptitude  is  not  an 
inherited,  but  an  acquired  characteristic,  and  its 
inclinations  are  as  cosmopolitan  as  those  of  Mr. 
Henry  Ford,  whose  attempted  gift  of  what  Lord 
Beaconsfield  must  have  called  "  Peace  with  Rubber  " 
intrigued  the  world  from  Kirkwall  to  Para.  There 
is  only  one  Prussian  type,  and  he  is  called  Bismarck. 
The  history  of  Prussia  is  the  history  of  its  suc- 
cesses ;  but  there  is  perhaps  more  instruction  to  be 
derived  from  the  record  of  its  failures.  It  cannot 
colonize  in  hot  climates  :  yet  it  seeks  an  empire 
overseas.  It  cannot  govern  subject  races  without 
alienating  them  as  far  asunder  as  the  Poles  :  yet  it 
seeks  to  revise  its  frontiers  within  Europe.  It  cannot 
manipulate  a  modern  constitution  :  yet  it  claims 
that  the  advance  of  its  frontier-stones  is  the  march 
of  civilization.     It  is  a  claim  that  must  be  denied. 


SOME    ROMANS 

THERE  is  an  admirable,  if  neglected,  joke 
by  the  forgotten  humorist  who  decorated 
the  east  front  of  the  Colonial  OfTice.  This  accom- 
plished person,  whose  exquisite  parodies  of  extinct 
statesmen  in  Imperial  attitudes  enliven  the  some- 
what melancholy  lives  of  the  pelicans  in  St.  James's 
Park,  shared  Nature's  abhorrence  of  a  vacuum. 
He  flourished  with  tropical  luxuriance  about  the 
year  1866,  and  disliked  blank  spaces.  His  treat- 
ment of  them,  which  was  generally  either  historical 
or  vegetable,  lapsed  in  one  magnificent  instance 
into  the  more  facile  method  of  allegory.  Having 
punched  a  number  of  windows  in  the  wall  which 
separates  the  Colonial  Secretary  from  the  traffic  in 
Whitehall,  he  proceeded  to  embellish  the  curved 
spaces  about  them,  which  a  less  fertile  genius 
would  have  left  empty,  with  several  figures  of 
young  persons  in  the  Victorian  nude.  These  are 
well  provided  with  those  assorted  fruits,  cereals, 
steam  locomotives,  and  spinning  jennies  which  are 
known  to  mythologists  as  attributes.  They  are  be- 
lieved to  represent  continents,  and  the  title  of  each 
continent  is  marked  in  plain  figures  underneath 
each  immodest  but  symbolic  person.  There  are 
six  continents,  and  they  are  called  Europe,  Asia, 
Africa,  America,  Australasia,  and  Education  :  it  is 
a  profound  allegory. 

78 


SOME      ROMANS  79 


One  should  add  that  the  last  continent  owes 
considerably  less  than  its  colleagues  to  the  explora- 
tion of  Englishmen.  Indeed,  it  has  never  been 
satisfactorily  ascertained  whether  the  English  mis- 
trust Education  because  it  is  suspected  of  a  con- 
nection with  Lord  Haldane,  or  Lord  Haldane 
because  he  is  feared  to  have  had  relations  with 
Education.  The  sixth  continent  is,  like  Tunis,  an 
odd  place  full  of  dates.  Its  sheds  are  all  water- 
sheds, and  its  gardens  are  all  kindergartens.  There 
are  no  songs  there  except  the  Gender  Rhymes, 
and  its  hterature  has  all  been  transposed  (with 
the  assistance  of  tlie  late  Dean  Bradley)  into 
Oratio  obliqua.  It  is,  in  fine,  a  continent  which  is 
more  at  home  in  a  University  than  in  the  narrower 
Hmits  of  the  universe,  and  it  belongs  more  obviously 
to  the  Montessori  than  to  the  solar  system.  That 
is  the  deluge  of  reflection  that  has  been  provoked 
by  the  erratic  symbohsm  of  a  Victorian  sculptor 
in  a  hurry  to  finish  off  his  decorations  in  time  for 
Mrs.  Disraeli's  At  Home  in  the  cold  weather  of 
1867. 

There  is,  on  the  face  of  it,  no  inherent  reason  why 
one  should  not  apply  the  geographical  method  to 
the  examination  of  the  works  of  man  as  well  as 
to  that  of  the  wonders  of  Nature.  The  mind  of 
Balzac  is  habitually  described  in  terms  of  under- 
growth and  jungle  by  those  indefatigable  impostors 
who  urge  young  men  to  read  the  Comedie  Humaine, 
and  are  presumably  forgiven  because  they  know 
not  what  they  do.  The  leading  text-books  on  the 
Canon  and  Apocrypha  of  Mr.  Conrad  will  inevitably 
divide  his  work  into  spring-  and  neap-tides  ;  and 
although  Mr.  Wells  will  drive  his  editors  off  the 


80  SUPERS 


earth  into  the  trackless  wilderness  of  astronomy, 
the  commentators  on  Mr.  Bennett's  Pentapolis 
papyri  will  find  geography  to  be  a  convenient 
frame  in  which  to  examine  the  camber  of  Trafalgar 
Road  and  the  "  off-licence  "  of  the  "  Tiger."  But 
of  all  the  worlds  in  which  the  mind  of  an  author 
has  ever  roamed,  the  most  geographical  is  the  world 
of  Edward  Gibbon.  The  setting  of  his  piece  is 
entirely  the  long  curving  background  of  the  Roman 
frontier  from  Borkum  to  the  Persian  Gulf. 

Almost  the  whole  of  Roman  history  is  Roman 
geography.  One  may  study  the  Republic  (as 
indeed  one  can  follow  almost  any  Imperialist 
development)  with  a  blank  map  and  a  pot  of  paint. 
Its  record  consists  of  a  combined  problem  in  mathe- 
matics and  geography,  showing  how  a  city  multi- 
plied by  an  army  became  a  peninsula,  and  how  all 
three  divided  by  a  navy  turned  into  the  Mediter- 
ranean sea-board.  That  is  where  one  finds  Rome 
in  the  year  44  B.C.,  with  the  provincial  system 
roughly  blocked  out,  and  an  attractive  young 
woman  of  the  name  of  Cleopatra  wondering  how 
she  could  get  an  introduction  to  a  bull-necked 
man  with  a  low  forehead,  named  Antony,  whom 
she  had  noticed  making  a  rather  noisy  speech  to 
a  crowd  in  the  Forum  over  the  body  of  her  old 
friend  Juhus  Cassar.  At  this  point  one  leaves  the 
Imperialist  Republic,  under  which  an  aristocracy 
of  army  contractors  conducted  an  empire  without 
a  civil  service,  a  line  of  policy,  or  a  system  of 
defence  ;  and  one  finds  oneself,  like  Garriek  between 
the  Muses,  led  by  Edward  Gibbon  and  Professor 
Bury  down  the  primrose  path  that  leads  to 
Romulus  Augustulus. 


SOME      ROMANS  81 


Now,  the  history  of  the  Roman  Empire,  unless 
one  is  to  regard  it  as  a  mere  concatenation  of  rather 
improper  anecdotes,  is  the  history  of  the  Roman 
frontier.     For  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  the 
Western  world,  policy  turned  inland.     Ancient  his- 
tory, before  the  frontier-builders  of  the  early  Empire, 
had  been  the  history  of  littorals,  and  the  history 
of  early  commerce  was  the  history  of  a  coasting 
trade  and  a  few  rivers.     But  with  the  Empire  it 
became  a  problem  (it  is  a  problem  that  was  never 
solved)  to  construct  a  military  frontier  that  should 
protect  the  Mediterranean  basin  upon  the  North- 
east  and  the  East.     Augustus   cleared   the  glacis 
of  the  Alps,  and  then,  in  the  war  in  which  Varus 
lost  his  legions,  he  attempted  to  open  out  to  the 
line  of  the  Elbe.     The  failure  was  acknowledged 
in  the  retreat,  which  was  as  complete  as  Napoleon's 
in  1814,  to  the  line  of  the  Rhine  and  in  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  provinces  called,  to  the  perpetual  satis- 
faction of  Mr.  Belloc,  the  Germanics.     In  the  wars 
of  Germanicus  the  advance  to  the  Elbe  was  again 
attempted  ;   but  Claudius  called   a   halt.     He  was 
an  author  of  plays,  an  admirer  of  Cicero,  and  a 
spelling-reformer ;   but  he   invented  Secretaries   of 
State  and  had  an  Imperial  policy.     The  successive 
pronunciamientos  v\^hich  threw  up  Galba  Otho,  Vitel- 
lius,  and  Vespasian  interrupted  the  formation  of 
the  frontier  until  the  German  Limes  was  formed 
across  the  angle  between  the  lower  Rhine  and  the 
middle    Danube.       Then    an    Andalusian    named 
Trajan  flung  out  the  two  great  salients  in  the  de- 
fence of  which  so  much  of  the  energy  of  the  Empire 
was  wasted  :  the  sahent  of  Bohemia  in  advance  of 
the  Danube  frontier,  and  the  sahent  of  Irak,  which 

6 


82  SUPERS 


was  intended  (if  it  was  intended  for  anything)  for 
the  protection  of  Asia  Minor  by  a  singularly  exag- 
gerated outwork.  After  the  effort  of  Trajan  the 
armies  of  the  Empire  fell  back,  and  the  manhood 
of  Western  Europe  entered  on  a  defensive  warfare 
of  four  centuries  against  the  barbarians  who  were 
to  make  the  Middle  Ages  the  admiration  of  clergy- 
men, romantics,  and  architects. 

That  is  the  severe  geographical  skeleton  upon 
which  the  history  of  the  Empire  should  be  con- 
structed, and  it  is  a  piece  of  work  which  General 
Young — a  gallant  officer  whose  military  views  are 
full  of  interest  and  originality — would  have  been 
well  qualified  to  produce.  He  is,  however,  as  Mr. 
James  would  have  said,  so  quite  heroically  "  out  " 
to  rewrite  Gibbon  ;  and  the  General  follows  with 
all  the  advantages  of  senior  rank  in  the  familiar 
footsteps  of  the  sceptical  Major  in  the  Hants  Militia. 
He  does  not,  however,  go  the  whole  Gibbon ;  his 
manner  in  anecdote  lacks  the  metallic  precision  of 
his  predecessor's,  and  he  is  somewhat  oppressively 
on  the  side  of  the  angels.  There  is  an  indignant 
protest  in  his  Preface  against  the  high  value  set 
upon  the  age  of  the  Antonines  : 

"  Only  when  viewed  from  the  standpoint 
of  a  strong  bias  against  Christianity,  such  as 
Gibbon  possessed,  a  bias  sufficiently  powerful 
to  make  him  feel  that  the  mere  fact  of  the 
Empire  being  Pagan  in  the  time  of  the 
Antonine  emperors  rendered  it  superior  to 
the  same  Empire  become  Christian,  could  the 
zenith  of  that  Empire  be  held  to  be  in  the 
time  of  the  Antonine  emperors." 


SOME      ROMANS  83 

General  Young  is  gallantly  prepared  to  detect  a 
heyday,  which  has  hitherto  escaped  attention, 
between  the  terminal  points  of  Constantine  and 
Theodosius.  If  it  is  a  healthy  symptom  (and  every 
patriotic  Englishman  must  hope  that  it  is  so)  that 
one's  art  should  all  be  shockingly  out  of  drawing, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  he  is  quite  correct. 
He  is  concerned  to  rescue  Constantine  and  Gratian 
from  the  rubbish-heap  and  to  denounce  "  the  error 
which  has  styled  the  retreat  of  the  Roman  army 
from  Persia  in  363  a  great  disaster  instead  of  a 
glorious  feat  of  arms  "  ;  it  is  curious  how  the  climate 
which  prevails  in  Irak  perpetually  renders  obscure 
the  precise  result  of  military  operations  conducted 
in  Mesopotamia.  But  in  spite  of  his  scholarship  and 
the  art  of  photography,  the  General  reads  (it  is  a 
compliment  to  both)  more  like  Gibbon's  ancestor 
than  his  descendant.  The  real  truth  is  that  there 
is  no  Gibbon  but  Gibbon,  and  Gibbon  is  his  prophet. 
The  solemn  march  of  his  cadences,  the  majestic 
impropriety  of  his  innuendo  are  without  rivals 
in  the  respective  annals  of  British  eloquence  and 
British  indelicacy ;  and  the  call  for  a  new  Gibbon 
is  no  stronger  than  that  to  which  Mr.  Mallock 
acceded  when  he  put  pen  to  paper  to  write  a 
New  Republic, 


SOME    LITERARY    MEN 

THERE   is   a   government   in   the   inner   parts 
of    Europe    which    has    omitted    to    supply 
the  customary  statistical  and  dynastic  information 
to  the  Almanack  de  Gotha  and  the  Statesman's  Year 
Book.     It  is  called  the  Republic  of  Letters,  and  it 
forms  the  subject  of  frequent  reference  by  Cabinet 
Ministers    at    public    dinners    given   in    honour    of 
destitute  literary  men.     It   differs  toto  ccelo  from 
that  great  Republic  of  the  West,  which  we  learned 
to  know  so  intimately  in  the  earlier  stages  of  the 
war  from  the  interception  of  its  parcels  post  and 
the  providential  discovery  of  a  German  attache's 
correspondence,    called   by    patriots  the    Scrap    of 
Papen ;  and  it  may  be  distinguished  by  the  posses- 
sion of  three  colonels  (Colonel  Maude,  Colonel  Roose- 
velt, and  Colonel  Newnham-Davis)  from  the  Swiss 
Republic,  which  has,  if  one  remembers  the  affaire 
des  colonels,  only  two.     It  is  notable  to  economists 
for  a  fiscal  policy  of  more  than  Mercantihst  fatuity, 
by  which  its  balance  of  trade  consists  entirely  of 
exports,  and  its  constitution,  which  embodies  lots 
of  Legislature  and  no  Executive,  will  bear  com- 
parison   for    anarchy    with    the    late    Republic    of 
Poland,  or  with  any  settlement  founded  upon  the 
principles  of  Brotherhood. 

This    neutral    stale,    as    innocent    of   belligerent 
intentions  as  Man   before  the  Fall   or  Roumania 

84 


SOME      LITERARY      MEN        85 

before  a  decisive  action  on  the  Eastern  front,  was 
at  one  time  the  object  of  a  sinister  manoeuvre  of 
secret  diplomacy  :  Mr.  Shaw  tried  to  bring  it  into 
the  war.  Its  exquisite  unsuitabihty  for  the  pur- 
pose has  been  vividly  summarized  in  a  couplet  of 
Mr.  Shaw's  own  "  Odahsque's  Song  "  (one  of  the 
less  familiar  lyrics  of  his  early  manner)  : 

"The  Bosphorus  is  the  boss  for  all 
In  this  harem,  harem,  harem,  harem,  harum-scarum  place.*' 

But  having  resolved,  apparently,  to  be  remem- 
bered in  history  as  the  successful  competitor  of 
Dr.  von  Bethmann-Hollweg  and  Viscount  Grey  in 
the  immolation  of  neutrals,  he  executed  a  demarche 
of  consummate  subtlety.  Decorating  the  unsus- 
pecting neutral  state  with  the  flattering  name  of 
Intelligentzia,  which  signifies,  in  the  language  of 
one  of  our  late  Allies,  that  arrogant  minority  which 
can  both  read  and  write,  he  invited  it  to  assume 
control  of  England.  A  Ministry  of  All  the  Talents 
was  to  be  substituted  for  a  Coalition  which  it  was 
charitable  to  suppose  had  once  possessed  some 
but  had  subsequently  buried  them ;  and  Mr.  Shaw 
would  be  enabled  to  gratify  his  long-cherished 
ambitions  with  the  Lord-Lieutenancy  and  the 
resulting  control  of  the  Abbey  Theatre.  The  minis- 
terial appointments  are  at  once  obvious  and  at- 
tractive. Mr.  Arnold  Bennett  as  Chancellor  of 
the  Duchy  of  Staffordshire,  Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton 
as  Toastmaster-General,  and  Sir  Thomas  Beecham 
as  Minister  of  Musicians  slip  naturally  into  their 
places.  Mr.  Hugh  Walpole  is  a  manifest  First 
Commissioner  of  Wrexe,  but  more  difficulty  might 
be   encountered  in  inducing  Mr.   Wells  to  accept 


86  SUPERS 


the  purely  legal  (and  Hegelian)  post  of  Lord  Chan- 
cellor. And  it  is  delightful  to  think  of  the  House 
of  Commons  sitting  for  fifty-six  hours  in  the  half- 
darkness  and  watching  the  glow  of  Marlow's  cigar, 
whilst  Mr.  Conrad  answered  a  supplementary  ques- 
tion about  the  disappearance  of  a  Dutch  consul 
in  the  Straits  of  Malacca  ;  and  to  figure  Mr.  Belloc, 
who  would  be  accommodated  as  Minister  without 
portfolio  because  he  had  lost  it  somewhere,  pro- 
ceeding rapidly  along  the  line  R — R — R  towards 
his  room  in  the  War  Office  is  magnificent.  But  it 
is  not  the  war. 

It  is  an  unfortunate  fact  that  the  Intellectuals 
are  unfitted  for  executive  posts.  Their  unsuita- 
bility  for  anything  but  a  commentator's  part  is 
apparent  from  every  one  of  their  illuminating 
utterances.  No  great  man  ever  knows  what  a 
war  (or  a  peace)  is  about,  because  any  person  of 
intelligence  tends  inevitably  to  idealize  its  causes. 
He  observes,  when  he  is  confronted  with  a  war, 
an  enormous  and  unparalleled  dislocation  of  human 
existence,  and  he  draws  the  intelligent  conclusion 
that  it  is  derived  from  a  dispute  of  commensurate 
importance.  That  is  precisely  where  in  nine  cases 
out  of  ten  (and  it  was  the  object  of  our  sincerest 
endeavours  to  persuade  ourselves  that  our  recent 
case  was  the  tenth)  the  Intellectual  is  hopelessly 
wrong.  He  is  wrong  because  he  is  so  intelligent. 
If  he  were  less  intelligent  he  would  move  from 
Golder's  Green  and  be  a  statesman ;  and  if  he 
were  less  intelligent  still,  he  would  take  a  house 
in  Kensington  and  be  a  historian  or  a  Civil  Servant. 
The  causes  of  most  wars  have  been  grasped  and 
stated  by  the  officials  who  conduct  them,  and  the 


SOME      LITERARY      IM  E  N         87 

man  of  light  and  leading  must  drop  to  the  level 
of  the  leading  article  before  he  can  understand 
them. 

The  attempt  was  made  by  several  literary  men 
to  demonstrate  that  the  last  war  was  a  war  of 
ideas ;  but  it  was  made  without  conspicuous 
success.  That  war,  which  was,  in  the  words  of 
George  III,  "  bloody  and  expensive,  but  just  and 
necessary,"  was  a  war  of  policies ;  and  a  policy 
with  an  idea  in  it  is  as  inconceivable  as  an  embassy 
with  a  doctrinaire  in  it.  Neither  in  its  origin  nor 
in  its  conduct  was  the  struggle  a  war  of  ideas, 
unless  it  may  be  held  to  have  acquired  that  char- 
acter from  the  establishment  of  an  Admiralty 
Board  of  Inventions  in  a  shipping-office  in  Cockspur 
Street,  where  some  distinguished  admiral  (with,  it 
is  to  be  hoped,  the  co-operation  of  Mr.  Heath 
Robinson)  sat  waiting,  like  a  sort  of  inverted 
Micawber,  for  something  to  turn  down. 

One  has  a  perfect  conviction  that  M.  Paderewski 
never  had  a  notion  what  Poland  was  at  war  for. 
He  left  that  to  an  admirably  named  M.  Grabski. 
It  became  equally  manifest  at  an  early  stage  that 
the  most  brilliant  of  our  propagandists  had  failed 
to  grasp  the  elements  of  England's  case  in  the 
recent  European  argument. 

We  were  all  to  be  congratulated  on  the  return 
to  controversy  of  that  Gilbert  whom  (if  it  is  not 
impertinent  to  say  so)  even  Mr.  Basil  Hallam 
would  have  hesitated  to  call  the  Filbert :  but  only 
a  hedonist  would  agree  with  a  statement  because 
he  enjoyed  it.  Mr.  Chesterton  did  not  devote 
very  much  space  to  that  enemy,  in  whom  we  all 
took  such  a  growing  interest  since  the  time  that 


88  SUPERS 


his  copper,  oil  and  rubber  increased  in  spite  of  the 
blockade.  But  having  apparently  formed  what  he 
himself  calls  the  '*  unfortunate  habit  of  publicly 
repenting  for  other  people's  sins,"  he  filled  a 
considerable  space  in  apologizing  for  the  Crimes 
of  England.  His  dramatization  of  history  was 
founded  on  the  simple  and  romantic  scenario 
that  a  buffle-headed  England  is  constantly  enticed 
by  a  diabolical  Prussia  into  opposition  to  a  milk- 
white  France.  The  characterization  is  so  plain  as 
to  be  almost  caricature,  and  the  drawing  is  so  simple 
that  it  is  merely  Simplicissimus.  One  suspects 
that  his  loyalty  to  his  French  and  Russian  Allies 
was  founded  on  the  pleasing  institution  of  the 
jjogrom  and  the  public  degradation  of  Captain 
Dreyfus  ;  and  one  detects  in  oneself  a  constant 
tendency  to  enjoy  him  without  stopping  to  dis- 
agree. There  is  a  brilliant  parable  of  the  Pan- 
German  horse,  which  has  been  reading  Houston 
Chamberlain  and  "  discovers  in  the  cat  '  the  char- 
acteristic equine  quality  of  caudality,  or  a  tail,'  " 
and  there  is  the  startling  suggestion  that  Italy 
declared  war  on  Germany,  which  would  have 
caused  Baron  Sonnino  to  faint  in  the  arms  of  Signor 
Salandra. 

But  Mr.  Chesterton  will  never  secure  a  conviction 
on  The  Crimes  of  England.  The  first  charge  is 
that  in  or  about  the  Seven  Years'  War  the  prisoner 
did  unlawfully  aid  and  abet  one  Frederick  Hohen- 
zollern  alias  the  Great  to  break  and  enter  the  Holy 
Roman  Empire  and  otherwise  maltreat  the  Balance 
of  Power.  Mr.  Chesterton's  reading  of  British 
policy  is  that  Chatham  took  England  into  the  war 
merely  to  score  off  France,  and  he  seems  hardly 


SOME      LITERARY      MEN         89 

to  have  noticed  that  the  signifieance  of  the  whole 
affair  for  England  was  not  European  at  all,  but 
Indian  and  American.  The  next  count  in  the 
indictment  is  the  long  war  against  the  Revolution 
and  Empire,  and  here  Mr.  Chesterton  has  a  notice- 
ably better  case,  altliough  he  almost  spoils  it  by 
an  observation  on  the  Low  Countries  : 

*'  It  is  very  arguable  that  England  must,  in 
any  case,  have  fought  to  keep  her  influence 
on  the  North  Sea.  It  is  quite  equally  arguable 
that  if  she  had  been  as  heartily  on  the  side 
of  the  French  Revolution  as  she  was  at  last 
against  it,  she  could  have  claimed  the  same 
concessions  from  the  other  side." 

This  is  one  of  the  few  moments  in  the  reading  of 
a  delightful  book  when  one  is  tempted  to  the 
angry  impertinence  that  even  if  the  Germans  spell 
Culture  with  a  K,  that  is  no  reason  why  Mr.  Ches- 
terton should  spell  Boche  with  an  S. 


SOME    TURKS 

THE  Eastern  or,  as  it  is  sometimes  romanti- 
cally termed,  the  old,  old  question  originated 
in  the  days  when  the  free  and  independent  nation- 
alities of  Europe  were  snarling  and  scuffling  in  the 
ruins  of  the  Roman  Empire.  Its  solution,  like  the 
ballad  style  and  the  art  of  staining  glass,  is  one 
of  the  things  which  the  ^Middle  Ages  omitted  to 
bequeath  to  the  modern  world,  and  by  that  omis- 
sion tempted  the  Nineteenth  Century  to  produce 
the  Treaty  of  Berlin,  the  ballads  of  Mr.  AVilHam 
Morris,  and  the  north  window  of  Rugby  Chapel. 

The  Roman  Republic,  which  had  carried  to  a 
supreme  height  the  arts  of  portrait-sculpture  and 
street-fighting,  left  to  its  successor  a  territory 
including  the  entire  Mediterranean  basin ;  and  the 
Empire,  having  added  to  its  dominions  during  the 
reign  of  a  lunatic  some  part  of  the  British  Isles, 
proceeded  to  protect  its  territory  by  the  trace  of 
the  Roman  frontier.  The  civilized  world  was  con- 
verted into  a  single  fortress  by  a  chain  of  fortified 
positions  which  followed  the  lines  of  the  Rhine, 
the  Danube,  and  the  Euphrates.  That  fortress 
faced  towards  the  East,  because  civiHzation  was 
threatened  solely  by  the  surplus  population  of  Asia, 
and  it  became  the  business  of  the  Roman  power 
to  protect  its  outworks.  The  history  of  the  ancient 
world  is  the  history  of  European  resistance  to  the 

80 


SOME      TURKS  91 

Asiatic  Drang  nach  Westen  ;  and  when  this  resistance 
failed  to  maintain  against  its  enemies  the  line  of 
the  Roman  frontier,  the  history  of  the  ancient 
world  came  to  a  sudden  and  chaotic  end.  Europe 
passed  into  "  the  filth  and  falsehood  of  the 
Middle  Ages,"  as  it  was  elegantly  described  by  the 
Reverend  Hugh  McNeile,  in  a  speech  on  Church 
extension  dehvered  at  Freemasons'  Hall  in  the 
year  1839;  and  the  power  of  Islam,  which  had 
brushed  away  the  Crusades  like  a  swarm  of  flies, 
entered  Europe  by  the  gate  of  the  Balkans.  Con- 
stantinople went  down  like  a  rotten  tree ;  and 
whilst  the  first  men  of  the  Renaissance  were  staring 
incredulously  across  the  North  Atlantic,  the  Turks 
watered  their  horses  in  the  Danube. 

The  Turkish  question,  which  has  been  answered  in 
various  tones  from  the  elaborate  irony  of  Lord 
Beaconsfield  to  the  synthetic  wisdom  of  the  Con- 
ference of  London,  is  a  successor  in  the  direct  line 
to  a  dozen  Eastern  questions  which  were  forced 
upon  Europe  by  the  collapse  of  the  Roman  line. 
The  Eastern  March  of  European  civilization  was 
protected  by  the  successive  efforts  of  the  Franks, 
the  Germans,  the  Czechs  and  the  Poles ;  and  it 
seemed  sometimes  that  Christendom  was  almost 
united  by  the  danger  in  the  East,  just  as  Gambetta 
sought  to  unite  French  republicans  by  the  appeal 
Regardez  la  trouee  des  Vosges.  It  has  been  observed 
by  sensitive  historians  that  the  destruction  of 
European  things  comes  always  from  the  East ; 
even  M.  Benedetti,  whose  discourtesy  to  the  King 
of  Prussia  at  Ems  was  fatal  to  the  Government 
of  Napoleon  III,  made  his  first  public  appearance 
as  Secretary  of  Legation  at  Constantinople.     Timur, 


92  SUPERS 


Jenghiz,  and  Attila  came  upon  Europe  from  the 
East,  and  this  sinister  succession  has  been  respon- 
sible for  a  long  series  of  sombre  perorations.  But 
it  is  perhaps  pardonable  to  point  out  that  bar- 
barian invaders  have  come  always  from  the  East, 
because  there  was,  prior  to  the  discovery  of  America, 
nowhere  else  for  them  to  come  from. 

It  is  almost  five  centuries  since  the  Turkish 
question  entered  upon  its  European  phase.  When 
the  fall  of  Constantinople  substituted  the  organized 
effort  of  Islam  for  the  random  and  seasonal  raids 
of  unco-ordinated  barbarians,  the  problem  was 
presented  for  solution  in  its  acutest  and  most 
painful  form  ;  and  it  did  not  vary  in  its  factors 
between  the  collapse  of  the  Genoese  infantry  in 
the  year  1453  and  the  Victorian  sensation  of  1876, 
when  Mr.  Gladstone  startled  his  readers  with  the 
most  effective  employment  of  foreign  names  in  the 
English  language  : 

"  Their  Zaptiehs  and  their  Mudirs,  their  Bim- 
bashis  and  their  Yuzbashis,  their  Kaimakams 
and  their  Pashas,  one  and  all,  bag  and  baggage, 
shall,  I  hope,  clear  out  from  the  province  they 
have  desolated  and  profaned." 

The  writer's  reference  was  to  the  province  of  Bul- 
garia, to  which,  if  Amsterdam  messages  were  to  be 
believed,  the  genial  presence  of  the  Bashi-bazouk  re- 
turned so  recently  as  during  the  late  war  in  response 
to  the  cordial  invitation  of  the  local  authorities. 

The  problem  set  to  European  intelligence  by 
the  Turkish  Empire  was  in  its  elements  a  simple 
one.     The    advance    of   the    Ottoman    Turks    had 


SOME      TURKS  93 


encamped  upon  European  soil  a  deeply  religious 
and  highly  military  people,  who  combined  an 
enlightened  monotheism  with  an  ability  to  fight 
behind  entrenchments.  In  face  of  this  power, 
which  controlled  Asia  Minor,  the  Balkan  Peninsula, 
and  the  waters  of  the  Black  Sea,  two  solutions 
were  practicable  ;  indeed,  it  is  notable  in  political 
history  as  the  sole  conjunction  of  events  which 
did  not  inspire  Mr.  Gladstone  to  confront  his 
countrymen  with  three  alternatives.  Either  the 
Turkish  power  might  be  stabihzed  by  the  French 
(and  later  the  German)  poHcy  of  foreign  commerce 
and  reform,  or  it  must  be  driven  out  of  Europe 
by  the  Austrian  (and  later  the  Russian)  policy  of 
expulsion  by  armed  force.  The  history  of  the 
Eastern  question  consists  of  the  alternation  of 
these  two  courses ;  and  what  our  fathers  used 
picturesquely  to  call  the  Concert  of  Europe  was 
confined  in  its  repertoire  to  variations  upon  these 
two  themes. 

The  crusading  efforts  of  Holy  Russia  form  a 
famihar  chapter  of  European  history,  but  the 
Austrian  phase  of  the  Eastern  question  is  a  more 
neglected  subject.  The  Austrian  power  was  driven 
directly  upon  the  alternative  of  expulsion  by  the 
great  offensive  of  1683,  which  had  brought  the 
Spahis  of  Kara  Mustapha  within  sight  of  Vienna  ; 
and  it  became  the  object  of  the  more  intelligent 
advisers  of  the  Emperor  Charles  VI  to  convert 
the  Hapsburg  monarchy  into  a  Danubian  power 
at  the  expense  of  Turkey.  The  memoirs  of  Prince 
Eugene,  whose  trilingual  signature  Eugenio  von 
Savoie  is  a  convenient  indication  of  the  cosmo- 
politan allegiance  of  Austrian  statesmen,  contains 


94  SUPERS 


a  remarkable  picture  of  those  Turkish  wars  in  which 
the  infidel  displayed  the  courtesy  of  Saladin 
towards  crusaders  in  periwigs.  His  Highness  had 
a  remarkable  taste  for  sermons,  and  it  may  be 
doubted  whether  his  aphorism  Cest  le  'premier 
jour  qu'on  entre  en  campagne  que  le  public  doit  etre 
injorme  des  alliances  would  find  any  extensive 
favour  with  the  Union  of  Democratic  Control. 
His  taste  for  de  bien  jolis  airs  d" opera- comique  was 
almost  light-minded,  and  his  opinion  of  the  English 
("  I  paid  great  court  to  Ministers.  I  gave  presents, 
because  England  is  a  great  country  for  buying.") 
is  worthier  of  a  disillusioned  Whip  than  a  dis- 
tinguished stranger.  But  Eugene  had  a  just  ap- 
preciation of  the  Turkish  genius  for  spade-work, 
which  he  believed  them  to  have  inherited  from 
the  Romans.  If  his  theory  is  correct,  it  is  by  a 
delicious  irony  that  the  Osmanli  have  employed 
Plevna,  Tchataldja,  and  Gallipoli  to  impress  Euro- 
peans with  the  Roman  tradition.  The  memoirs  of 
Eugene  are  full  of  the  characteristic  names  and 
actions  of  the  Turkish  wars  : 

"  The  Bashaw  and  the  garrison  were 
massacred.  The  Seraskier  burnt  Novigrad 
to  the  ground.  .  .  .  There  was  a  Bashaw 
amongst  our  prisoners  whom  I  questioned 
to  no  purpose  upon  the  plans  of  Kara 
Mustapha ;  but  the  action  of  four  Hussars, 
who  stood  with  drawn  swords  ready  to  cut 
him  to  pieces,  prevailed  upon  him  to  confess 
that  Szegedin  had  been  his  object." 

In  a  conversation  held   at   Rastadt  two  years 
after  Malplaquct  Eugene  gave  to  Villars  a  vivid 


SOME      TURKS  95 

picture  of  savage  warfare  on  the  lower  Danube, 
where  one  met  "  their  flanking  Spahis  with  their 
cursed  howls  of  Allah !  Allah !  and  their  trick  of 
coming  on  by  fifties  round  a  little  flag."  This 
encounter  of  Viennese  cosmopolitans  with  the 
militant  theology  of  Asia  was  a  singular  experience 
for  the  men  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  and  it  forms 
one  of  the  queerest  chapters  in  the  history  of  the 
Eastern  question. 

That  question  may  be  studied  from  either  of  two 
angles.  It  is  customary  in  Europe  to  follow  the 
European  side  of  the  duel,  and  to  trace  the  transi- 
tions by  which  the  crusader's  sword  passed  from 
Austria  to  Russia,  and  from  Russia  to  the  Balkan 
League.  It  is  a  line  of  study  which  enables  one 
to  appreciate  Eugene's  wise  prophecy  to  his  master 
in  the  year  1734  that  the  Serbs  and  Bosniaks 
would  inevitably  oppose  the  House  of  Hapsburg, 
and  it  affords  the  exquisite  spectacle  of  Lord 
Beaconsfield  congratulating  his  Peers  on  the  well- 
founded  opinion  of  Count  Bismarck  that  "  Turkey 
in  Europe  once  more  exists."  But  it  is  sometimes 
worth  while  to  examine  the  problem  of  Turkey 
from  the  angle  of  Turkey.  The  experiment  must 
seem  almost  as  attractive  as  to  examine  the  problem 
of  evil  from  the  angle  of  the  Evil  One ;  but  it  is 
worth  making.  Sir  Mark  Sykes,  who  will  probably 
be  known  to  posterity  as  the  author  of  a  perfect 
parody  of  the  Drill-book,  has  put  into  three  hun- 
dred pages  the  history  of  Asia  Minor  from  the 
riparian  Kultur  of  the  Accadians  to  the  formation 
of  the  Turkish  Empire  in  its  present  shape,  and  he 
is,  in  spite  of  a  shocking  conviction  that  history 
is    really    amusing,    a    most    attractive    historian. 


96  SUPERS 


His  short  biography  of  the  Prophet  is  perhaps  a 
trifle  familiar,  but  he  comprehends  exactly  the  tem- 
per of  Islam.  Some  such  foundation  as  his  book 
provides  is  urgently  needed,  if  the  Englishman 
who  thinks  about  the  Eastern  question  is  to  under- 
stand what  the  Turk  thinks  about  the  Western 
question.  The  Turk  is  usually  the  last  person 
who  is  considered  in  those  rearrangements  of  his 
territory  which  are  so  generously  undertaken  by 
others  on  his  behalf,  and  it  is  perhaps  time  to  call 
him  before  the  curtain,  if  only  as  author  of  the 
piece. 

His  views  on  the  problem  of  Armenia  are  a 
trifle  startling  in  one  of  his  nationality  ;  he  finds  the 
Armenians  profoundly  unpleasing,  especially  when 
leavened  by  American  missionary  effort ;  he  an- 
nounces that  "  the  Armenian  national  revival  was 
a  calamity  which  has  not  yet  reached  its  cata- 
strophe " ;  and  he  is  inclined  to  agree  with  the 
unpopular  opinion  of  the  late  Sultan  Abdul  Hamid 
that  the  removal  of  the  Armenian  question  can 
only  be  effected  by  the  removal  of  the  Armenians. 
His  real  sympathy  is  for  the  Arab  on  the  sufficient 
grounds  that  he  is  a  monotheist  and  a  Fine  Fellow ; 
and  one  accepts  with  respect  the  opinions  of  a 
traveller  whose  journeys  make  the  map  of  Asia 
Minor  look  like  an  illustration  to  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles. 

But  the  foremost  merit  of  Sir  Mark  Sykes  as  an 
observer  is  that,  like  James  Morier,  he  appreciated 
the  supreme  absurdity  of  the  East.  It  has  been 
justly  observed  that  there  is  nothing  funnier  than 
a  foreigner,  and  the  solemn  imbecility  of  Orientals 
is   one   of  the  most  delightful  spectacles  provided 


SOME         TURKS  97 


by  Providence  for  the  entertainment  of  English- 
men. 

He  met  a  Kurd  who  expressed  my  own  objection 
to  being  photographed,  because  "  God  only  knows 
what  is  looking  through  those  great  eyes."  His 
escort  was  commanded  by  a  sergeant  who  had 
been  sentenced,  by  the  adorable  fatuity  of  the  East, 
to  one  hundred  years'  imprisonment  for  murder, 
and  he  met  in  the  middle  of  a  desert  a  genial  little 
man  who  had  got  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  for 
robbing  the  Alexandretta  mail.  As  a  Conservative, 
Sir  Mark  could  appreciate  the  comedy  of  Huriyeh, 
the  Turkish  equivalent  of  Liberie,  EgalitS,  Fra- 
ternite,  which  inspired  young  officers  in  1909  to 
say  J^ adore  le  jambon,  je  bois  le  koniak  in  the  first 
frenzy  of  emancipation.  But  above  all  there  is 
the  pure  farce  of  the  Boundary  Commission  on  the 
Turco-Persian  frontier,  which,  finding  itself  totally 
unprovided  with  any  form  of  map,  was  perman- 
ently and  pardonably  drunk.  Asia  is  not  a  mystery, 
where  sinister  men  with  cruel  eyes  and  queer 
crooked  scimitars  crouch  and  mutter  round  low 
fires  in  black  Bedouin  tents  :  Asia  is  one  of  the 
jokes  that  Europe  cannot  see. 


SOME    SERBS 

IT  was  the  Dictionary  of  Quotations  (that 
great,  if  somewhat  confused  thinker)  who 
said  Inter  arma  silent  leges  ;  and  it  was  never  more 
obvious  than  in  that  saying  that  the  Romans 
had  not  the  advantage  of  our  acquaintance.  The 
moderns  may  have  their  weaknesses  of  principle 
and  conduct,  but  it  will  stand  always  to  their 
credit  that  they  have  given  the  lie  to  every  proverb 
upon  which  tliey  could  lay  hands  ;  ten  minutes 
with  the  Defence  of  the  Realm  Regulations  would 
have  knocked  the  Roman  aphorist  off  his  pro- 
verbial perch.  Since  those  summer  holidays  when 
five  Powers  went  to  war  instead  of  going  to  the 
seaside,  we  have  lived  under  what  Professor  Dicey 
would  call  the  Rain  of  Law.  The  official  impera- 
tive was  never  more  categorical ;  the  toga  would 
appear  to  have  forgotten  its  Ciceronian  obligation 
to  yield  to  the  sword.  On  one  afternoon  in  that 
first  summer  M.  Noulens  tabled  in  the  French 
Chamber  of  Deputies  eighteen  proj els  de  loi  :  it 
was  the  first  rafale  of  the  legislative  "  seventy-five." 
Great  Britain,  by  the  combined  energies  of  Parlia- 
ment and  the  Privy  Council,  produced  in  three 
months  a  Handbook  of  Emergency  Legislation 
which  dwarfed  a  volume  of  the  Annual  Statutes, 
and  the  Germans  in  Belgium  volleyed  proclama- 
tions with  a  reckless  profusion  of  ammunition. 

98 


SOME       SERBS  99 

But  no  provisional  enactment  of  the  whole  season 
was  more  sensational  than  the  decree  by  which 
the  Servian  Government  repealed  Grimm's  Law. 
It  had  resulted  from  the  sinister  machinations  of 
that  philological  Hun  that  the  English  for  Servia 
was  in  some  danger  of  confusion  with  the  Latin 
for  slave  ;  King  Peter's  Minister  at  the  Court  of 
King  George  was  therefore  authorized  to  announce 
to  the  panic-stricken  compositors  of  the  English- 
speaking  race  that  "  b  "  was  no  longer  etymologi- 
cally  interchangeable  with  **  v."  However  ridicu- 
lous it  may  appear  to  carry  warfare  into  the 
alphabet,  one  was  willing  to  accede  to  every  wish 
of  a  bitterly  tried  ally.  But  the  alteration  repre- 
sents, in  one  view,  a  considerable  loss.  The  name 
of  Servia,  which  cannot  connote  servility  to  any  one 
except  an  ingenious  schoolboy,  stands  in  history 
for  the  full  record  of  a  vigorous  member  of  the 
Eurojiean  family.  If  the  past  of  Servia  were 
dishonourable,  one  could  have  sympathized  with 
the  change  ;  but  when  one  can  hear  in  that  name 
the  long  roll  of  the  wars  against  Turkey,  one  is 
unwilling  to  let  it  pass  out  of  the  history  of  the 
war  against  the  Magyar. 

.  The  historical  mission  of  the  Servian  Empire  in 
the  days  when  Durazzo  played  Calais  to  Brindisi's 
Dover  was  to  provide  a  buffer-state  between 
Rome  and  Byzantium.  It  has  been  observed  by 
railway  engineers  and  Afghan  statesmen  that  the 
principal  qualities  of  a  buffer  are  resilience  and 
stability,  and  there  seems  no  reason  why  Jugo- 
slavia should  not  exhibit  them  when  it  is  called 
on  to  perform  the  less  heroic  duties  of  buffer 
between  Italy  and  Hungary.     The  problem  of  its 


100  SUPERS 


reconstruction  depends  closely  and  entirely  upon 
the  past  extent  and  present  distribution  of  the 
race.  We  must  be  careful  to  reconstruct  not  any 
old  Servia,  but  the  historical  Old  Servia.  Since 
tlie  Serb  race  occupies  the  north-western  massif 
of  the  Balkan  Peninsula,  which  has  a  littoral  upon 
tlie  Adriatic,  it  has  been  necessary  at  some  points 
to  modify  the  logical  demands  of  strict  ethnology 
in  accordance  with  the  political  requirements  of 
Italy,  whose  interest  in  that  sea  is  supreme.  But 
it  was  at  least  possible  in  an  intelligent  demarca- 
tion of  Slav  and  Latin  areas  to  eliminate  the 
astonishing  imposture  of  Albania.  In  so  far  as 
the  Mpret's  forsaken  subjects  were  genuine  Alba- 
nians, their  autonomy  represented  a  mildly  satis- 
factory solution  of  a  Balkan  Ulster  question  ;  but 
when  it  was  agreed  between  Rome  and  Budapest 
to  endow  that  amazing  creation  with  an  ample 
coast-line  and  an  Epirote  province,  it  was  a  fraud 
upon  Servia  and  Greece.  In  later  life  the  deformed 
child  of  an  unhappy  marriage  ceased  to  be  even 
entertaining,  and  its  death  by  the  simultaneous 
amputation  of  Epirus  and  Valona  left  no  mourners. 
England,  by  some  fortunate  miracle,  possesses  no 
Albania  Society. 

Yet  although  you  may  permit  a  man  to  call 
Agram  "  Zagreb,"  it  is  not  easy  to  surrender  Spalato 
to  the  people  who  call  it  "  SpHt." 

The  history  of  modern  Servia,  like  the  history 
of  modern  Europe,  begins  in  the  age  of  the  French 
Revolution.  The  Pashalik  of  Belgrade,  after  an 
interval  of  mild  reform,  was  revisited  in  1804  by 
the  familiar  circumstance  of  a  Turkish  massacre. 
An    ex-officer   of  Austrian    police,    named    George 


SOME       SERBS  101 

Petrovich,  headed  a  national  rising,  which  con- 
verted a  provincial  riot  into  a  war  of  liberation 
and  founded  the  royal  house  of  Kara-George. 
When  Napoleon  marched  the  Army  of  England 
from  the  Boulonnais  to  the  Danube,  the  Servian 
nation  was  little  more  than  a  religious  conspiracy  ; 
in  the  year  of  Wagram  it  was  a  sovereign  State. 
But  four  years  later  the  reaction  in  Servia,  as  in 
Western  Europe,  returned  in  triumph.  The  national 
leadership  had  passed  to  Milosh  Obrenovich,  and 
in  the  rainy  autumn  of  1813,  which  saw  Napoleon 
ride  whistling  into  Leipzig,  the  Turks  returned  to 
the  disloyal  Pashalik  with  the  genial  accompani- 
ments of  Spain  feudalism  and  famine.  Milosh 
opened  a  second  war  of  liberation  in  1815,  and 
Servia  was  more  fortunate  than  France  in  its 
Hundred  Days.  Six  months  of  war  and  fifteen 
years  of  negotiation  secured  Servian  independence. 
The  new  State  did  not  become,  like  Greece,  the 
darling  of  Russian  diplomacy ;  and  the  enfants 
perdus  of  English  drawing-rooms  never  fought  the 
battles  of  Milosh  Obrenovich  as  they  were  prepared 
to  die  for  Ypsilanti  in  the  name  of  Pericles.  The 
Servian  State  came  into  existence  by  the  leave  of 
Turkey  and  without  the  humihation  of  European 
assistance.  The  liberation  of  Italy,  which  had 
preached  the  principle  Italia  fara  da  se,  was  the 
work  of  Napoleon  III ;  but  the  unaided  Risorgi- 
mento  of  Servia  was  as  creditable  to  its  national 
effort  as  the  military  revelation  of  1912  by  which 
the  Balkan  monarchies  demonstrated  to  their  dis- 
gusted patrons  that  they  could  walk  alone. 

The  rise  of  Servia  was  an  ungenial  education  in 
politics.     It  is  the  misfortune  of  "  nations  strug- 


102  SUPERS 


gling  to  be  free,"  when  they  lose  the  illusions  of 
their  youth,  that  they  learn  the  advantages  of 
opportunism.  To  that  lesson  the  Serb  added  a 
natural  aptitude  for  sudden  death  ;  and  this  com- 
bination, which  brought  him  successfully  through 
two  European  wars  in  eighteen  months,  has  helped 
him  to  survive  a  third.  One  knows  nothing  of 
Serb  humour  except  that  it  laughs  "  ha-ha  "  to 
the  trumpeters. 

The  Anglo-Servian  alliance  was  perhaps  the 
queerest  combination  of  the  war  which  sent  Sikhs 
to  restore  King  Albert  to  Brussels  and  Australians 
to  force  the  Straits  for  Russia.  The  Serb  has 
made  the  bitter  discovery  that  wars  are  won  by 
man-power  alone,  and  he  has  learnt  in  battle  and 
pestilence  the  truth  of  the  Biblical  observation, 
"  The  sinews  of  war  is  death."  That  is  why  he 
was  not  an  unworthy  ally,  and  the  alliance  was  not 
inconsistent  with  the  tradition  of  British  pohcy. 
Great  Britain,  by  the  policy  of  the  Balance  of 
Power,  was  the  standing  ally  of  small  nations. 
It  may  be  true  that  she  prefers  to  keep  them  small, 
and  tliat  she  takes  little  interest  in  her  foreign  rela- 
tions when  they  cease  to  be  poor  relations.  But 
it  was  by  design  and  not  by  accident  that  she  sided 
in  the  war  with  Servia  and  Belgium.  The  alliance 
of  Belgium  made  a  singular  appeal  to  British 
opinion  :  it  would  be  no  more  than  justice  if  the 
name  of  Servia,  which  has  won  greater  battles  in 
the  face  of  greater  odds,  were  raised  to  an  equal 
height. 


SOME    PEERS 

I.  LORD   RUSSELL 

THERE  are  few  things  more  disappointing 
in  English  history  than  Enghsh  revohitions. 
It  is  for  the  future  to  show  whetlier  John  Tanner 
wrote  the  Revolutionisfs  Handbook  in  vain ;  but 
the  revohitions  of  the  past  exhibit  a  dismal  and 
domestic  gift  of  never  upsetting  the  national 
household.  In  the  Great  Rebellion  the  King  left 
by  the  front  door ;  in  the  Glorious  Revolution  he 
emerged  from  the  tradesmen's  entrance;  and  the 
Revolution  of  1832  never  happened  at  all.  The 
Whig  Party,  having  made  the  second  and  directed 
the  third,  spent  the  evening  of  its  days  in  con- 
templation of  itself,  took  to  writing  memoirs,  and 
died  in  or  about  the  year  1895.  One  may  judge 
it  as  the  President  of  the  Probate,  Divorce,  and 
Admiralty  Division  judges  his  votaries — by  reading 
their  letters.  The  Russell  letters  are  uniformly  and 
magnificently  Whig.  They  were  manifestly  written 
in  the  library  corner  near  the  bust  of  Locke.  They 
are  calm  and  spacious  and  full  of  Virgil,  deliberate, 
and  resigned  with  the  resignation  of  men  who 
governed  England,  because  there  were  only  about 
sixty-four  real  people  in  the  country  to  do  it. 

But  one  must  not  belittle  Russell,  the  gravity 
of  the   Twenties,    and    the   honesty    of  the    Whig 

1U3 


104  SUPERS 


Settlement.  At  the  end  of  the  Great  War  England 
found  herself  exposed  to  the  full  horrors  of  peace. 
The  taxpayer  discovered  (the  discovery  is  almost 
topical)  that  whilst  he  maintained  such  luxuries 
as  an  Army  of  Occupation  in  France  and  a  policy 
of  non-intervention,  he  could  not  see  those  sweeping 
reductions  of  taxation  which  had  been  his  dream 
since  Mr.  Pitt,  in  February,  1792,  anticipated 
"  lifteen  years  of  peace  " ;  the  farmer  realized  that 
War  Office  contracts  were  apt  to  terminate  with 
wars ;  and  the  shipowner  observed  without  enthu- 
siasm the  end  of  a  blockade  which  had  meant  to 
him  the  monopoly  of  the  world's  carrying  trade. 
The  consequences  were  the  stormy  years  from 
Waterloo  to  the  Reform  Bill,  "  an  awful  period," 
as  Sydney  Smith  called  it,  the  classical  time  of 
English  Liberalism,  his  familiarity  with  which 
gives  their  chief  value  to  Mr.  Asquith's  excursions 
into  historical  precedent.  It  had  become  tradi- 
tional for  the  Whigs  to  conduct  England's  revolu- 
tions. But  many  of  them  approached  the  new 
problems  in  the  temper  of  a  family  practitioner 
faced  with  unauthorized  symptoms ;  and  their 
management  of  the  transition  from  bare  oligarchy 
to  a  "  sort  of  "  democracy  lacked  the  pantomime 
smoothness  of  the  transformation  scene  of  1688. 

On  this  time  the  Russell  correspondence  admits 
a  considerable  volume  of  new  hght.  It  is  possible 
with  the  material  that  has  been  rescued  from 
limbo  to  study  the  Whig  in  every  stage  of  evolu- 
tion, from  the  chrysalis  of  Lord  Holland  regretting 
"*the  vulgar  and  unjust  abuse  of  Borough  Mon- 
gers," because  "  the  influence  of  property  must 
exist,   and   I  certainly  think  it  is  happy  that  it 


SOME      PEERS  105 


must''  to  the  developed  democracy  of  the  Re- 
formers of  1832.  In  these  letters  the  growth  of 
Lord  John's  views  may  be  studied  before  a  per- 
fect background  of  Lord  Holland  and  his  own 
father,  who  is  perfectly  revealed  in  a  series  of 
excellent  letters  written  in  1811  :  against  such  a 
background  Lord  John's  colouring  is  anything  but 
protective. 

Mr.  Rollo  Russell's  memoir  of  his  father,  with 
which  the  letters  are  prefaced,  quaintly  blends  a 
workmanlike  summary  of  his  career  with  such 
recondite  information  as  that  copies  of  Fox's 
speech  on  the  fifth  Duke  of  Bedford  "  as  printed 
by  Ridgway  are  rare."  It  has  the  air  sometimes 
of  an  outline  biography,  sometimes  of  a  strayed 
footnote,  but  in  general  the  editor  obtrudes 
himself  singularly  little.  The  memoir,  some  notes 
on  persons,  six  admirable  pages  on  the  condi- 
tion of  England,  and  a  rather  irritating  collection 
of  obituary  appreciations  complete  the  record 
of  his  part  in  this  filial  monument.  For  the  rest 
he  has  been  content  to  set  out  the  letters  and  to 
excise  portions  of  Lord  John's  early  verse  :  both 
operations  are  welcome  and  dutiful,  and  it  was 
seasonable  to  remind  us  that  Russell  wrote  in  1874 
that  "  from  Adrianople  to  Belgrade  all  government 
should  be  in  the  hands  of  Christians." 

The  collection  covers  only  half  of  Russell's  extra- 
ordinary life.  He  was  born  six  weeks  before  Valmy, 
and  died  in  sight  of  the  Treaty  of  Berlin  ;  but  the 
letters  leave  him  in  1840,  when  a  gentleman's  collars 
were  still  as  high  as  his  principles,  and  Queen 
Victoria  was  young. 

Their  chief  value  is  on  the  side  of  his  private 


106  SUPERS 


life  ;  the  political  correspondence  maintains  a  high 
level  of  interest,  especially  in  the  Thirties  ;  but  it 
has  to  some  extent  been  used  already,  if  much  of 
it  has  never  before  been  printed.  It  is  a  blow  to 
the  theory  that  expulsion  from  school  is  the  neces- 
sary prelude  to  greatness  to  learn  that  Russell 
was  "  the  best  of  all  good  little  boys,"  and  as  such 
he  was  invariably  portrayed  in  Punch.  Perhaps 
the  editor  has  been  unduly  lenient  in  admitting 
the  obsequious  appreciations  of  his  preceptors  ;  the 
Georgian  pedagogue  is  a  little  exhausting  when  he 
is  on  his  best  behaviour.  The  Peninsular  letters 
are  all  interesting ;  not  many  young  men  have  a 
European  war  for  a  feature  of  their  holidays,  and 
Russell's  Spanish  experiences  were  thoroughly  in- 
structive. At  Edinburgh  he  was  a  persevering 
debater,  and  read  papers  on  the  Cortes  with  the 
air  of  an  expert.  More  valuable  was  his  inspection 
of  Peninsular  battlefields,  and  he  never  forgot  in 
later  political  struggles  the  qualities  which  he  saw 
in  Wellington  at  Torres  Vedras.  In  the  year  of 
Leipzig  he  entered  Parliament,  and  it  is  by  a  de- 
liglitful  irony  that  the  Reformer  first  represented 
his  fellow-citizens  when  he  was  a  minor. 

In  1814  he  visited  Elba  and  saw  the  Emperor, 
who  had  become  temporarily  a  part  of  tlie  Grand 
Tour.  There  is  an  account  in  an  unpublished  letter 
of  their  conversation ;  Napoleon  informed  the 
young  man  that  there  would  be  no  war  in  Europe 
at  present,  explained  the  Saxon  and  Polish  ques- 
tions, and  condemned  the  American  War.  In  his 
Introduction  the  editor  has  secured  interesting 
confirmation  of  the  other  recorded  remark  of 
Napoleon  in  the  same  conversation  :  tlie  Emperor 


SOME      PEERS  107 

was  of  opinion  that  Wellington  was  aiming  at 
the  English  throne,  a  brilliant  illustration  of  his 
inability  to  understand  anything  English.  He  had 
studied  English  history  with  infinite  pains  when 
he  was  in  the  Artillery,  and  he  had  not  learned  that 
in  England  gratitude  takes  the  form  of  super- 
session ;  Napoleon's  judgment  in  this  instance  was 
vitiated  by  a  fatal  familiarity  with  his  own  country, 
where  great  men  were  used,  not  shelved. 

There  are  few  revelations  in  these  letters,  but 
they  are  valuable  for  the  sustained  picture  of  the 
times,  the  Whigs,  the  countless  Russells,  and  the 
growing  realization  that  somewhere  outside  was  the 
population  of  England. 

II.   LORD    WELLESLEY 

IT  was  Mr.  Kipling  who  discovered  that  pro- 
consuls prance,  and  no  one  should  know  better. 
There  is  something  about  the  temporary  occupation 
of  an  Oriental  throne  that  unfits  its  tenants  for  a 
more  even  gait ;  and  since  high  stepping  is  un- 
popular in  British  politics,  their  later  careers  are 
often  flavoured  with  a  bitter  taste  of  failure. 
When  a  satrap  is  returned  empty  from  his  province, 
there  is  no  sadder  sight  than  his  continued  efforts  ; 
Nature  spares  to  extinct  volcanoes  the  indignity 
of  a  prolonged  activity  on  half-pay.  There  is  no 
failure  so  dismal  as  a  successful  man,  and  the 
after-lives  of  viceroys  have  all  the  bitterness  of 
fallen  royalty  without  any  of  its  faintly  romantic 
quality.  Of  this  depressing  type  the  Marquess 
Wellesley  is  a  conspicuous  and  familiar  instance  ; 
he  reached  his  greatest  eminence  in  Calcutta  before 


108  SUPERS 


he  was  forty,  and  for  the  remainder  of  a  long  hfe 
he  revolved  gloomily  round  Dublin  Castle  and  the 
Foreign  OfTice  in  the  hopeless  endeavour  to  live 
within  his  reputation.  A  protracted  bearing  of 
the  White  Man's  Burden  not  infrequently  afflicts 
the  carrier  with  a  stiff  neck  and  a  high  stomach. 
These  are  the  industrial  diseases  of  Empire,  but 
they  are  fatal  to  the  disabled  worker's  chances  of 
subsequent  employment :  it  is  the  Curzon  touch. 
Wlicn  a  sub-tropical  magnate  returns  to  St. 
Stephen's  on  his  way  to  Westminster  Abbey,  he  is 
apt  to  discover  that  his  gifts  are  more  easily  demon- 
strable from  the  Throne  than  across  the  floor  of 
the  House,  and  to  observe  with  disgust  the  decline 
of  the  terror  of  the  back-blocks  into  a  super- 
numerary on  the  Front  Bench.  In  that  position 
a  man  falls  back  upon  his  education  ;  he  will  begin 
by  reading  Thucydides  for  political  purposes,  but 
a  very  few  years  will  see  him  translating  Catullus. 
When  he  cannot  speak,  he  reads  ;  and  when  he  can 
no  longer  read,  he  writes.  It  will  always  be  sig- 
nificant that  Wellesley  published  his  juvenilia  at 
the  age  of  eighty. 

The  accident  of  birth  has  cast  across  all  his 
achievement  the  long  shadow  of  the  Duke  of 
Wellington ;  one  should  not  have  eminent  brothers, 
if  one  proposes  to  be  eminent  oneself.  Wellesley 
lived  his  life  under  a  fraternal  cloud  which  he 
shares  with  Quintus  Cicero  and  Mr.  Gerald  Balfour. 
But  it  is  possible  to  discern  beneath  it  a  tolerably 
brilliant  career.  He  emerged  after  a  polite  educa- 
tion into  the  world  of  Irish  politics,  and  entered 
the  Irish  House  of  Lords  in  the  days  when  D\iblin 
was  a  capital,  before  Mr.  Pitt  had  established  the 


SOME      PEERS  109 

money-changers  in  its  Parliament.  His  observa- 
tions on  the  subject  of  Irish  volunteers  are  not 
uninteresting,  since  volunteering  is  once  more  the 
vogue  west  of  Holyhead.  "  The  assembly  of  the 
volunteers,"  he  informed  the  House  in  1783,  "  has 
sat  for  nearly  three  weeks  with  all  the  forms  of 
Parliament ;  and  will  any  noble  Lord  say  that 
they  have  no  intention  to  infringe  the  privileges 
of  Parliament  and  to  attempt  the  total  extinction 
of  the  laws  of  the  land  ?  "  And  fifteen  years  later 
he  received  from  Lord  Auckland  a  report  that  is 
even  more  topical :  "  The  Orange  Boys,  as  they 
are  called  in  Ireland,  are  growing  numerous  (above 
30,000)  and  are  most  inveterate  against  the  United 
Irish.  They  are  a  dangerous  species  of  ally  ;  hoAV- 
ever,  to  a  certain  degree  it  is  necessary  to  use 
them."  Truly  Ireland  is  as  unchanging  as  the 
East. 

Twelve  months  after  his  Irish  debut  Mornington 
secured  the  support  of  a  minimum  of  Devonshire 
freeholders,  and  appeared  in  the  House  of  Commons 
as  member  for  Beer ;  like  all  young  men  with  a 
future,  he  specialized  in  a  remote  subject,  and 
delivered  a  maiden  speech  on  the  Indian  adminis- 
tration of  Warren  Hastings.  Nine  years  later  he 
obtained  recognition  as  a  Privy  Councillor  and 
Commissioner  of  the  Board  of  Control.  In  those 
days  the  road  to  the  East  lay  through  Leadenhall 
Street,  and  young  men  who  commended  themselves 
to  the  Company  might  look  forward  with  confidence 
to  a  wealthy  middle  age.  He  was  now  involved 
in  an  elaborate  manoeuvre  for  high  office  ;  a  great 
part  of  his  correspondence  consists  of  letters  whose 
sole  value  is  that  they  display  the  working  of  the 


110  SUPERS 


machine  of  patronage.  But  there  comes  a  point 
at  which  a  diet  of  loaves  and  fishes  is  cloying 
to  the  historian  ;  the  eternal  feeding  of  the  multi- 
tude, which  was  the  main  business  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  is  a  monotonous  spectacle,  and  the  editor 
can  do  little  to  provide  us  with  a  change  of  scene. 
Eventually,  after  a  protracted  campaign  across  the 
Front  Bench  and  up  the  back  stairs,  Mornington 
obtained  his  deserts,  and  became  Governor-General 
of  India,  with  an  English  peerage  and  the  title  of 
Baron  Wcllcslcy.  The  Meredithian  interlude  of  his 
private  life  was  closed  by  his  marriage  with  Made- 
moiselle Roland,  and  he  sailed  for  India  by  the  Cape, 
leaving  his  wife  to  look  after  his  children  and  his 
country  to  deal  as  best  it  could  with  the  French 
Revolution.  From  1797  to  1805  he  played  with  dis- 
tinction the  part  for  which  he  had  been  cast  by 
IMr.  Pitt,  whilst  his  brother  earned  under  him  an 
increasing  reputation  as  a  Sepoy  General.  His 
correspondence  at  this  period  is  less  uninteresting 
than  at  almost  any  other  ;  he  was  kept  posted  by 
friends  at  home  in  the  course  of  European  affairs, 
and  he  sent  in  return  dissatisfied  portraits  of  Anglo- 
Indian  society,  "  so  vulgar,  ignorant,  rude,  familiar, 
and  stupid  as  to  be  disgusting  and  intolerable ; 
especially  the  ladies,  not  one  of  whom,  by-the-bye, 
is  even  decently  good-looking."  Perhaps  it  would 
be  unkind  to  add  that  the  East  is  as  unchanging 
as  Ireland. 

These  sorrows  of  monarchy  do  not  weigh  hardly 
on  kings,  because  kings  are  necessarily  semi- 
educated  ;  but  Wellesley  was  an  able  man  and  felt 
his  position  acutely.  It  is  interesting  to  learn  that 
the   Anti-Jacobin  sold    2,300    copies    weekly ;    and 


SOME      PEERS  111 

Pitt's  full  Irish  policy,  which  was  interrupted  by 
the  conscience  of  George  III,  has  never  been 
better  summarized  than  in  a  letter  by  Lord  Ilawkes- 
bury  :  "  He  proposes  to  give  Ireland  one  hundred 
members  in  the  House  of  Commons  and  thirty  in 
the  House  of  Lords ;  to  give  the  Catholics  (if 
possible)  the  little  that  remains  to  be  given  them  ; 
to  establish  an  equality  of  trade  in  all  respects 
between  the  two  countries.*'  In  1800  Welleslcy 
received  the  crowning  insult  of  a  step  in  the  Irish 
peerage — his  "  double-gilt  potato  " — and  his  tem- 
per, w^hich  was  being  tried  in  the  attempt  to  reconcile 
Leadcnhall  Street  to  the  forward  policy  of  the 
Mahratta  War,  descended  from  high  wrath  to 
puerility.  Six  years  later  he  landed  in  England 
as  a  sort  of  Scipio  Asiaticus,  and  re-entered  the 
eternal  game  of  Cabinet-making.  In  1809  he  made 
an  effective  appearance  in  Spain  as  Ambassador 
to  the  Junta  and  applied  his  imperative  diplomacy 
to  his  languid  ally ;  and  on  his  return,  since  foreign 
policy  was  Spanish  policy,  he  w^as  very  properly 
promoted  to  the  Foreign  Office.  In  his  correspon- 
dence as  Foreign  Secretary  there  are  two  passages 
of  supreme  interest :  a  long  review  of  the  European 
and  American  situation  which  he  submitted  to 
Wellington  in  1811,  and  the  romantic  story  of  an 
attempt  to  rescue  Ferdinand  VII  of  Spain  from  his 
French  prison,  in  which  British  warships  flit  up 
and  down  the  Breton  coast  and  Vendean  veterans 
roam  in  a  mysterious  darkness.  In  1812  he  re- 
signed because  of  undue  economies  effected  in  the 
provision  for  the  Peninsular  War,  and  survived  by 
thirty  years  the  date  at  which  his  career  ceased  to 
possess  any  but  a  private  interest. 


112  SUPERS 


III.   LORD   NORTH 

THE  statesman  who  conferred  upon  the  habit- 
able   globe    the    inestimable    benefit   of  the 
United    States    has    awaited    his    biographer    for 
one    hundred    and    twenty    years.     He    has    seen 
Chatham    become    a    legend    and    Charles    Fox    a 
complete    literature,    whilst    his    own    record    was 
confined  to  the  perfunctory  invective  of  text-books 
and  the  comic  relief  of  lecture-rooms.     Probably 
he  has  regarded  the  circumstance  with    complete 
equanimity.     If  his  life  had  been  written  twenty 
years  ago,  he  would  have  received  a  severe  white- 
washing ;  and  that  is  a  degradation  which  he  has 
eventually  been  spared.     Nothing  is  more  humilia- 
ting to  a  Borgia  than  to  figure  in  a  collection  of 
Quiet  Lives   of  the  Rennaissance,    and   a   rehabili- 
tation of  North's  gloriously  shot-scarred  reputation 
would    have    been    like    a    wanton    restoration   of 
Fountains  Abbey. 

North  and  his  kind,  moreover,  form  a  splendid 
part  of  the  English  tradition.  The  combination 
of  high  oflice  with  frank  incapacity  is  peculiar  to 
these  islands;  and  it  is  unpatriotic  to  pretend 
otherwise.  It  is  only  foreigners,  decadent  Latins 
or  unwieldy  Teutons,  who  have  to  seek  out  able 
men  to  be  their  governors.  It  is  the  first  glory 
of  the  English  system  that  it  can  support  in  office 
anything  with  two  arms  and  a  head,  even  though 
its  governor  gesticulates  and  gyrates  as  wildly  as 
the  governor  of  a  steam-engine.  Lord  North  was 
of  the  Bull-dog  Breed  ;  he  made  considerable  con- 
tributions to  the  Rough  Island  Story,  He  was  an 
Absent-Minded  Beggar. 


SOME      PEERS  113 

His  clear-sighted  biographer  has  no  nonsense 
about  his  noble  subject.  He  does  not  suggest  that 
the  loss  of  the  American  Colonies  formed  part  of 
a  far-seeing  scheme  for  increasing  the  Empire  by 
African  expansion  and  the  endowment  of  North 
scholarships  in  American  universities.  He  does 
not  pretend  that  North  was  handsome  or  eloquent 
or  profound.  One  is  left  with  the  picture  of  a 
humorous  fat  man,  who  slept  on  the  Treasury 
Bench  and  made  jokes  about  himself.  North  had 
the  Ministerial  manner  and  a  gift  for  repartee. 
As  the  Minister  of  George  III,  when  the  King  had 
frankly  established  an  absolutist  system  of  personal 
Government,  he  had  the  courage  of  his  master's 
convictions.  His  courage,  which  lasted  until  at  the 
news  of  Yorktown  he  flung  up  his  arms  like  a  shot 
man,  makes  him  a  less  ignoble  figure  than  New- 
castle, the  other  incapable  Minister  of  the  century. 
He  weathered  as  severe  a  storm  as  the  younger 
Pitt,  and  nobody  has  ever  v/ritten  songs  about 
him. 

He  entered  Parliament  in  1754  as  member  for 
Banbury,  and  in  his  later  career  he  became  pre- 
eminently a  House  of  Commons  man.  His  neat 
little  jokes,  his  habit  of  unabashed  somnolence, 
and  the  easy  insolence  of  his  Ministerial  manner 
endeared  him  to  that  singular  assembly.  ThQ 
House  preserves  many  reputations  from  the  rougher 
handling  of  the  country,  and  it  appears  to  prefer 
its  heroes  slightly  ridiculous.  North  fulfilled  its 
requirements  completely.  In  five  years  he  was  a 
Lord  of  the  Treasury,  and  in  the  race  for  high 
office  he  was  only  ten  years  behind  the  younger 
Pitt.     North  became  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer 

8 


114  SUPERS 


at  thirty-five  :  but  no  one  ever  says  so.  It  is  true 
that  he  was  only  appointed  because  Charles  Town- 
shend  was  dead ;  but,  after  all,  Mr.  Goschen  was 
only  appointed  because  Lord  Randolph  Churchill 
was  forgetful. 

North's  reputation  was  blasted  by  the  American 
War  of  Independence.  He  did  not  find  a  solution 
for  the  problem  of  colonial  taxation,  and  he  failed 
to  reconquer  with  a  small  professional  army  a 
continent  on  the  other  side  of  the  world.  The  in- 
dictment is  not  unanswerable.  In  his  policy  he 
was  in  complete  agreement  with  the  majority  of 
his  countrvmen,  and  in  his  conduct  of  the  war 
his  defeat  was  inevitable  and  not  criminal.  He 
even  deserves  his  country's  gratitude.  By  the 
American  War  he  relieved  England  of  an  intol- 
erable incubus  of  disloyal  colonics.  If  a  heaven- 
sent Whig  had  intervened  in  1775  and  averted 
the  rupture,  the  colonists  would  undeniably  have 
broken  away  twenty  years  later,  when  England 
was  confronted  with  the  simultaneous  and  graver 
menace  of  the  French  Revolution.  To  that  double 
shock  the  country  must  have  succumbed,  and  it 
was  North's  statesmanship  which  by  a  brilliant, 
if  unintentional,  stroke  saved  the  State.  He  is 
one  of  the  Empire  Builders,  even  though  he  built 
largely  by  knocking  down  and  wholly  in  his  sleep. 

IV.    LORDS   LYONS   AND    CLARENDON 

THE  worst  consequence  of  the  pernicious 
habit  of  reading  is  the  loss  of  one's  illu- 
sions. The  truth  about  diplomacy  is  the  most 
disappointing    thing    in    Europe.     One    had   been 


SOME       PEERS  115 

brought  up  by  generations  of  dramatists  to  believe 
it  to  be  an  Olympian  intercourse  of  elderly  (but 
still  attractiv^e)  gentlemen,  their  shirt-fronts  barred 
with  a  ribbon  of  a  primary  colour  and  their  conver- 
sation starred  with  a  coruscation  of  unappropriated 
epigram.     Diplomacy  was  the  only  possible  occupa- 
tion for  Ouida's  heroes  when  they  were  past  work. 
It  was  a  splendid  and  exclusive  world,  where  all 
documents  were  secret  and  every  mot  was  the  mot 
juste,    a    sort    of    international    Belgravia,    where 
repartees  settled  the  fate  of    nations.     As  a  pro- 
fession it  became,  after  the  disappearance  of  the 
smuggler,  the  last  refuge  of  romance.     A  career  of 
patriotic   leisure   and   the   combination   of  a   title 
with  the  habit  of  constant  untruthfulness  served 
to  surround  the  diplomatist  with  a  romantic  halo, 
whose  radiance  was  undimmed  by  the  fact  that  it 
was  stereotyped.     Now  we  know  better ;  we  are 
wiser  and  proportionately  sadder.     Autumn  winds 
of  reality  have  blown  upon  our  diplomats,  and  the 
feuilletons   are   falling.     They   are   found   to   be   a 
persevering  class  of  the  most  voluminous  leader- 
writers    in    Europe.     Sometimes    they    call    their 
leading  articles   Despatches  and  send  them  home, 
sometimes  they  call  them  Notes  and  read  them  to 
one  another  :  then  there  is  a  war.     They  dislike 
decorations,   eschew   mysterious   exits,   and   disap- 
prove  strongly   of   mendacity.     They   even   work. 
They  manage  these  things  better  in  Sardou. 

Apart  from  this  dismal  revelation,  one  may  learn 
a  good  deal  from  the  study  of  these  two  gentlemen, 
one  a  great  ambassador  and  the  other  a  considerable 
Foreign  Secretary.  Both  are  strongly  impressed 
Avith  the  characteristics   of  Britisli  dij^lomac}'.     It 


IIG  SUPERS 


has  no  tradition  and  an  abundance  of  good  stories. 
It  has  not,  with  the  exception  of  the  control  of  the 
Low  Countries  and  the  road  to  India,  any  constant 
objective ;  and  it  is  not  unified  in  its  history  by  the 
presence  of  any  such  authorized  canon  of  pohcy 
as  made  Russian  ministers  for  two  centuries  the 
interpreters  of  codicils  to  the  will  of  Peter  the 
Great.  But  it  makes  up  admirably  into  volumes 
of  memoirs. 

Lord  Lyons,  who  is  remembered  almost  entirely 
for  his  twenty  years'  embassy  in  Paris,  began  life 
at  the  age  of  ten  as  an  honorary  midshipman.  He 
abandoned  these  arduous  duties  in  favour  of  a 
classical  education,  but  retained  throughout  life  an 
appearance  of  the  admiral  that  he  so  nearly  became. 
His  first  mission  of  importance  was  to  Washington, 
where  he  represented  Great  Britain  through  the 
Civil  War.  A  considerable  interest  attaches  to 
his  correspondence  during  that  bewildered  struggle 
between  two  hostile  forces,  distinguishable  only  by 
the  fact  that  one  side  wore  the  hats  of  dustmen, 
the  other  side  the  hats  of  postmen.  It  is  a  period 
with  which  the  efforts  of  military  writers  and  the 
cinematograph  are  making  us  increasingly  familiar, 
and  Lyons'  interpretation  of  the  American  temper 
reveals  an  acuteness  that  was  belied  by  his  John- 
Bullish  exterior.  There  is  a  delightful  comment 
of  Lord  Palmerston  on  "  the  defeat  at  Bull's  Run, 
or  rather  at  Yankee's  Run,"  which  observes  that 
"  the  truth  is,  the  North  are  fighting  for  an  Idea 
chiefly  entertained  by  professional  politicians,  while 
the  South  are  fighting  for  what  they  consider 
rightly  or  wrongly  vital  interests."  In  1865  Lyons 
went  for  two  years  to  Constantinople,  and  although 


SOME      PEERS  117 

he  was  not  one  of  the  great  Near  Eastern  diplomats, 
he  was  at  least  more  intelligent  than  Lord  Stanley. 
The  assertion  of  Lord  Stratford  de  Redcliffe,  that 
veteran  viceroy  of  the  Near  East,  that  "  Austria 
would  be  a  safer  neighbour  to  the  Porte,  even  the 
whole  length  of  the  Danube,  than  either  Russia  or 
an  independent  Union,"  makes  queer  reading  in 
these  days,  when  the  Drang  nach  Salonik  is  ancient 
history  and  indigenous  populations  scramble  for 
Silistria.  It  is  interesting  to  learn  that  King 
Edward  in  1866  was  strongly  anti-Turkish  ;  he  was 
an  unlikely  Gkdstonian  at  any  time,  and  his  posi- 
tion at  home  must  have  been  curious,  when  Queen 
Victoria  and  Lord  Beaconsfield  were  sitting  cross- 
legged  and  sending  Sikhs  to  Malta  for  the  support 
of  Abdul  Hamid. 

From  Constantinople  Lyons  went  to  Paris,  where 
he  remained  until  his  death  twenty  years  later. 
He  obtained  the  first  embassy  in  Europe  at  the 
age  of  fifty,  and  his  career  became  a  reflection  of 
French  history  from  the  Prussian  War  to  the 
Sehnaebele  incident.  He  was  an  intelligent  observer 
of  the  Prussian  menace,  although  he  could  not  spell 
Bismarck's  name,  and  of  the  prelude  to  the  war  ; 
Clarendon's  unsuccessful  efforts  to  secure  disarma- 
ment were  made  through  him,  and  his  reports  to 
London  in  the  hot  weather  of  1870  startled  his 
superiors.  Lord  Granville  wrote  :  "  Your  telegram 
of  yesterday  arrived  while  we  were  debating  the 
Land  Bill.  It  took  Mr.  Gladstone  and  me  by 
surprise."  It  was  the  day  that  Benedetti  arrived 
at  Ems.  On  the  same  day  Mr.  Goschen  presented 
a  Report  of  the  Select  Committee  on  Local  Taxa- 
tion ;  it  was  printed  a  week  later,  on  the  day  of  the 


118  SUPERS 


declaration  of  war  :  it  is  a  glorious  reflection.  His 
intimate  contact  with  French  politics,  from  Gam- 
l)etta  and  Grevy  to  Ferry  and  Boulanger,  makes 
his  later  career  a  satisfactory  and  much-needed 
British  supplement  to  M.  Hanotaux's  obstinately 
unlhiished  work.  It  is  queer  that  Jules  Ferry 
should  have  hungered  for  a  coup  foudroyant  against 
China  ;  it  was  the  phrase  which  had  sent  the  army 
of  Chalons  to  Sedan.  His  recitation  of  Byron,  his 
sense  of  humour,  and  his  taste  for  jam  (which  only 
retreated  before  his  final  determination  to  join  the 
Roman  Church)  mark  him  as  a  model  uncle.  He 
had  the  habit  of  identifying  footmen  by  their 
calves,  and  once  fought  Leighton  with  pillows. 
And  he  was  a  great  ambassador. 

Clarendon  had  this  in  common  with  Lyons,  that 
he  spelt  Bismarck  without  his  "  c."  But  what  in 
Lyons  was  an  error,  was  in  Clarendon  the  proper 
protest  of  a  Whig  against  the  ridiculous  ortho- 
graphy of  foreigners'  names.  His  biographer 
admirably  conveys  the  WTiig  view  of  the  Continent, 
when  he  juxtaposes  the  following  entries  in  his 
analysis  of  a  chapter  : 

*'  Marriage  of  Lady  Constance  Villiers  to  the 
Hon.  F.  Stanley      ....     ^\st  May,  18G4. 

Austria  and  Prussia  occupy  Ilolstein  and 
Schleswig        February,   1864." 


That  is  the  way  we  taught  those  foreigners  to 
keep  their  places.  Clarendon  moved  in  the  highest 
Whig  circles  ;  some  of  his  correspondents  are  even 
a  trifle  supercilious  about  the  House  of  Hanover, 
as  when  Miss  Emily  Eden  saw  "  the  firm  of  Wales, 
Cambridge,    and    Greece "    shooting   in    Richmond 


SOME       PEERS  119 

Park,  and  observed  tliat  "  when  the  Duke  of 
Cambridge  lets  himself  out  in  a  loose  shooting 
coat,  I  think  he  reminds  me  of  the  dear  lost 
Henry  VIII." 

Clarendon's  career  began  with  a  picturesque 
Ministry  at  Madrid  ;  but  his  importance  rests  on  ten 
years  passed  at  the  Foreign  Office.  In  the  course 
of  his  two  terms  he  declared  war  against  Russia, 
signed  the  Treaty  of  Paris,  and  failed  to  prevent 
the  Franco-Prussian  War  ;  it  is  a  full  record.  His 
seven  years'  embassy  at  Madrid  in  the  Thirties 
took  him  into  the  most  confused  and  penniless 
period  of  Spanish  policy.  Ferdinand,  who  had 
closed  the  University  and  endowed  a  school  of 
bull-fighting,  was  dead ;  the  Regent  governed  for 
Isabella ;  and  Cristinos  fought  promiscuously  against 
the  Wliites.  A  Mr.  George  Borrow  was  selling 
Bibles  and  getting  himself  into  trouble  with  the 
authorities  ;  Clarendon  intervened,  although  he  was 
discouraged  by  the  "  impossibility  of  defending 
with  success  all  Mr.  Borrow's  proceedings,"  and 
succeeded  in  extracting  Mr.  Borrow  from  gaol. 
Politics  were  in  the  hands  of  a  democracy  of  emo- 
tional sergeants,  and  political  promotions  were 
providing  the  Spanish  army  with  an  enormous  corps 
of  generals  and  a  disappearing  supply  of  subalterns. 
And  through  it  all  the  people  of  Spain  continued 
to  smoke  cigarettes,  the  officers  of  the  Spanish 
Navy  availed  themselves  of  the  royal  permission 
to  act  as  licensed  fishmongers  in  the  harbour  in 
which  their  commands  were  laid  up,  and  Clarendon 
contemplated  matrimony. 

His  second  term  at  the  Foreign  Office  possesses 
a   more   European   interest.     He   is   still   a   Whig, 


120  SUPERS 


supercilious  nbout  Mr.  W.  E.  Forster's  "  rough 
Yankee  sort  of  exterior,"  but  he  has  larger  topics 
to  consider.  The  Prussians  are  in  the  Duchies, 
and  Lord  John  Russell  is  graciously  of  opinion 
that  "  Bismarck  is  very  amusing  with  his  baby 
fleet."  Twelve  months  later  the  Duke  of  Cam- 
bridge writes  about  *'  that  horrible  needle-gun," 
and  Clarendon  believes  that  "  everything  plays 
into  L[ouis]  N[apoleon]'s  hands."  The  man  who 
could  so  misread  Sadowa  was  not  likely  to  avert 
the  war  of  1870.  He  attempted  to  disarm  Europe 
six  months  before  Sedan.  Bismarck,  in  a  compli- 
ment to  his  daughter,  said  that  he  would  have 
succeeded  if  he  had  lived  ;  it  was  a  graceful  remark, 
but  it  is  questionable  history.  Sir  Herbert  Maxwell 
has  adorned  the  valuable  pages  of  his  biography 
with  a  quantity  of  elegant  extracts  from  the 
classics  ;  those  which  are  in  a  dead  language  he 
charitably  translates.  It  is  perhaps  as  well  that 
the  war  of  1870  lay  outside  his  scope  :  it  is  the 
one  thing  in  history  which  approaches  ^schylus, 
and  nothing  would  have  satisfied  Sir  Herbert  short 
of  the  bodily  quotation  of  the  entire  Persce. 


SOME    LAWYERS 

AN  ancient  and,  judged  by  contemporary 
standards,  an  honourable  profession  has 
long  made  its  home  in  the  Temple,  once  described 
(doubtless  in  anticipation  of  the  event)  as  a  den 
of  thieves.  The  traffic  of  the  metropolis  goes 
round  and  (in  the  case  of  the  District  Railway) 
underneath  this  haunt  of  ancient  strife  ;  and  its 
precincts — the  Temple  has  always  been  credited 
with  the  possession  of  precincts — are  undisturbed 
by  the  thunder  of  urban  life.  It  is  in  the  world 
of  London,  but  not  of  it,  an  aloofness  that  stands 
in  singular  contrast  to  the  thrusting  persistence 
with  which  its  professional  population  has  steadily 
permeated,  with  none  too  peaceful  penetration,  the 
lives  of  their  fellow-countrymen.  Other  trade 
unions  have  dictated  the  price  of  our  bread,  the 
warmth  of  our  firesides,  and  the  specific  gravity  of 
our  beer.  But  it  was  reserved  for  the  oldest,  the 
narrowest,  and  the  most  powerful  of  the  guilds 
to  tamper  with  the  quality  of  our  jokes.  There  is 
about  the  vast  majority  of  legal  facetiae  a  quiet 
but  sustained  ghastliness  that  has  earned  the  candid 
detestation  of  the  lay  public ;  and  it  is  a  tribute  to 
the  slow  charm  exhibited  by  the  raconteur  of  a 
recent  collection  to  say  that  it  will  really  bring 
illumination  to  all  who  w^ish  to  find  out  what 
exactly  these  lawyer  fellows  are  up  to,  and  that 

121 


122  SUPERS 


it  will  be  read  by  them,  not  only  with  useful  instruc- 
tion on  the  ideals  of  a  great  profession,  but  with 
rare  enjoyment  of  good  stories.  And,  if  one  of 
these  lawyer  fellows  may  say  so,  the  compiler  has 
deserved  well  of  the  little  republic  of  the  law  by 
interpreting  its  ideals,  its  standards,  and  its 
manners  and  customs  in  a  way  that  should  leave 
no  excuses  for  future  misunderstanding. 

He  quotes  with  indignation  Disraeli's  summary 
of  the  legal  career  as  "  port  and  bad  jokes  till 
fifty,  and  then  a  peerage."  But  he  expresses  his 
gratitude  for  having  escaped  the  infliction  of  a 
peerage  by  sparing  his  public  the  corresponding 
infliction  of  bad  jokes.  The  flow  of  anecdote  under 
which  he  conceals  the  serious  business  of  describing 
the  legal  world  is  a  delightful  stream  in  which 
one  may  fish  in  a  random  way  for  pearls.  Any 
trustee  will  thrill  with  sympathy  at  the  story  of 
the  examiner  who  said  : 

*'  My  rule  is  to  pass  a  man  who  gets  fifty  per 
cent,  of  full  marks.  Now,  I  asked  him  two 
questions.  The  first  was,  '  What  is  the  rule 
in  Shelley's  case  ?  '  He  answered  that  it  had 
something  to  do  with  poetry.  Well,  that  was 
wrong.  The  second  was,  '  What  is  a  con- 
tingent remainder  ?  '  He  answered  that  he 
was  sure  he  didn't  know.  Well,  that  w^as  right, 
and  so  I  passed  him." 

That,  of  course,  is  precisely  what  a  contingent 
remainder  is. 

And  no  litigant  whose  counsel  has,  after  the 
manner  of  counsel,  persistently  misnamed  him 
throughout  the  conduct  of  a  case,  will  be  able  to 


SOME       LAWYERS  123 

withhold  the  tribute  of  a  cheer  (which  will,  in  the 
ancient  ritual,  be  instantly  suppressed)  at  the  bitter 
cry  of  the  Judge  : 

"  Mr.  Attorney,  so  long  as  you  consistently 
called  the  plaintiff,  whose  name  is  Jones,  by 
the  name  of  Smith,  and  the  defendant,  whose 
name  is  Smith,  by  the  name  of  Jones,  the 
jury  and  I  could  follow  you  ;  but  now  that 
you  have  introduced  the  name  of  Robinson 
without  indicating  in  any  way  whether  you 
mean  it  to  refer  to  the  plaintiff  or  to  the  defen- 
dant, or  to  both  indifferently,  we  are  beginning 
to  get  bothered  a  bit." 

The  truth  is,  however  disrespectful  one  may  feel 
about  the  unsuitability  of  trade  union  jokes  for 
the  general  public,  that  the  jokes  of  the  great 
trade  union  of  the  law  are  universally  applicable. 
There  may  be — there  indubitably  are — tales  of  a 
technical  and  slightly  carboniferous  character  about 
hairbreadth  "  escapes  "  that  get  roars  of  laughter 
at  the  annual  meeting  of  the  Gasfitters'  Finishers' 
Union.  The  Textile  Workers  may  wipe  their  eyes 
and  waggle  their  hands  feebly  over  a  perfectly 
excruciating  story  about  jacquards  and  hackling 
pins  ;  and  the  Union  of  Journalists  may  (for  all  that 
I  know)  have  their  little  jokes.  But  so  few  of  us 
are  gasfitters,  or  weavers,  or  (really)  journalists, 
that  the  points  of  their  professional  humour  whizz 
harmlessly  overhead — like  the  spears  in  Homer. 
But  we  are  all,  in  so  far  as  we  are  debtors,  creditors, 
tradesmen,  customers,  husbands,  fathers,  sons,  or 
ratepayers,  members  of  the  great  society  of  the 
law,  even  omitting  the  smaller,  esoteric  group  of 


124  SUPERS 


the  barristers,  solicitors,  and  jurymen.  The  law 
is  at  once  the  fairy-godmother  and  the  wicked 
uncle  of  contemporary  English  life.  Without  it 
there  would  be  no  marrying  or  giving  in  marriage, 
no  burglaries,  street  accidents  or  assaults,  no 
bankruptcies  or  arson,  no  bigamy  or  perjury,  nor 
any  of  those  interminable  police  mysteries  or 
"  breezes  in  Court  "  which  are  the  salt  of  modern 
life.  Great  is  the  law,  and — against  whatever 
competing  topics — it  will  prevail. 


SOME    REVOLUTIONARIES 

IN  days  when  every  newspaper  reader  is  neces- 
sarily something  of  a  connoisseur  in  revolu- 
tions, and  Macaulay's  schoolboy  (if  he  is  still  alive) 
could  tell  us  the  precise  distinction  between  a  bread- 
riot,  an  emeute,  and  a  pronunciamiento,  it  is  re- 
freshing to  be  taken  back  to  the  original  source 
of  all  revolutionary  inspiration,  and  to  walk  once 
more  through  the  hot  French  summers  of  the  years 
between  1789  and  1794.  One  was  growing  a  trifle 
weary  of  the  mechanical  vulgarity  of  modern 
revolutions,  with  their  motor  lorries  and  machine 
guns  and  confusion  in  the  telephone  exchanges  ; 
and  the  return  to  the  pikes  and  simplicity  of  the 
French  primitives  is  a  delightful  experience.  One 
may  even  hope  that  a  revival  of  interest  in  the 
Primavera  of  revolution  may  give  us  a  Pre-Leninite 
Brotherhood. 

But,  to  say  truth,  the  excursion,  as  one  makes  it 
with  the  modern  historian  for  guide,  is  a  trifle 
explanatory ;  and  as  this  indomitable  expositor 
hurries  the  eager  amateur  of  the  Revolution  round 
some  familiar  corner,  he  is  almost  apt  to  recapture 
that  ungrateful  desire  to  be  left  alone  in  the  Chamber 
of  Horrors  which  must  so  often  have  swept  over 
Dante  as  he  toured  another  Inferno  with  another 
(and  still  more  distinguished)  cicerone.  It  is 
enough   for   most   of  us,    when   the   overture   falls 

IK 


12C  SUPERS 


silent  and  the  curtain  rises  on  that  broad  and  Hghted 
stage  on  which  the  Revolution  was  played  out,  to 
sit  quiet  in  our  stalls  and  to  watch  the  unrolling 
of  the  great — the  greatest — drama.  But  such  seden- 
tary inactivity  as  this  hardly  suffices  for  the  heroic 
temper  of  a  Mrs.  Webster.  Avid  of  explanations, 
she  must  be  up  and  doing  among  the  scene-shifters  ; 
she  threads  her  way  through  the  stage-crowds, 
interrogates  the  property  man,  and  drags  her 
gaping  readers  through  the  coulisses  of  the  Revo- 
lution, as  she  tracks  down  one  after  another  of  the 
secret  factors  that  lie  behind  the  familiar  frontage 
of  its  history. 

The  plain  truth  about  the  Revolution  is  that  it 
just  happened ;  and  the  study  of  that  happening 
should  be  enough  for  most  of  us.  One  may  study 
it  without  either  the  manie  de  Vinedit  which  impels 
the  indomitable  M.  Lcnotre  to  give  us  foot-note 
biographies  of  all  the  people  who  wxtc  passing 
along  the  street  outside  a  building  where  some- 
thing was  really  happening,  or  the  engaging  per- 
secution mania  with  which  the  latest  of  its 
historians  tears  off  the  mask  of  history. 

In  sympathetic  obedience  to  a  strong  contem- 
porary tendency,  she  finds  German  influences  at 
work  in  the  causes  of  the  explosion  ;  Marie  Antoin- 
ette, the  inevitable  heroine  of  the  piece,  appears 
as  a  sound  anti-German,  who  is  consequently  vic- 
timized by  Prussian  diplomacy,  and  the  Illuminati 
devote  an  early  Fabian  subtlety  to  the  task  of 
plunging  France  into  pre-Bakuninist  anarchy.  But 
the  greatest  efforts  of  her  ingenuity  are  reserved 
for  the  unmasking  of  the  Orleanist  plot.  Philippe 
Egalite,  who  normally  appears  on  the  revolutionary 


SOME      REVOLUTI  O  N  A  R  I  E  S        127 

stage  as  a  mild  buffoon,  is  cast  for  a  sinister,  but 
leading,  part ;  and  the  whole  tide  of  the  Revolution, 
in  this  new  philosophy,  is  drawn  after  him  by  that 
moon-faced  man.  Writing  with  the  full  gusto  of 
a  Bonapartist  pamphleteer  under  Louis  Philippe, 
our  lady  detective  finds  the  Orleanist  hand  active 
on  every  side.  The  party,  which  was  apparently 
organized  under  the  disreputable  lieutenancy  of 
Choderlos  de  Laclos,  is  made  to  include  the  most 
mixed  revolutionary  company  :  Mirabeau,  Danton, 
Marat,  Camille  Desmoulins,  Dumouriez,  and  Manuel 
all  appear  in  Orleanist  livery ;  and  the  food  shortage 
of  '89,  the  riots  which  preceded  the  storm  of  the 
Bastille,  and  the  journee  of  June  20,  1792,  are  all 
attributed  to  this  novel  powder  of  evil.  Such  an 
analysis  of  the  secret  causes  of  revolutionary  events 
is  profoundly  interesting  to  connoisseurs  of  the 
Revolution ;  but  it  hardly  produces  a  narrative  of 
events  that  is  suitable  for  the  novice  who  cannot 
distinguish  the  Veto  from  the  Maximum.  And  one 
sometimes  wonders,  as  one  reads  her  ingenious 
exposition  of  how  one  statesman  worked  the  rain- 
barrel  w^hile  a  colleague  was  busy  producing  rolls 
of  thunder  from  the  tin  trays,  whether  the  storm 
wdiieh  blew  down  half  the  barriers  in  Europe  was 
really  a  mere  triumph  of  theatrical  "  effects." 

This  Mrs.  Webster  is  a  trifle  unfortunately  inchned 
to  treat  the  merits  of  the  Revolution  as  a  subject 
that  is  still  open  to  discussion.  Her  authorities 
are  sometimes  stigmatized  as  "  pro-revolutionary 
writers,"  and  one  is  tempted  to  ask  whether  the 
historians  of  the  Flood  should  be  similarly  classified 
as  "  pro-diluvian  "  and  "  anti-diluvian."  She  some- 
times   handles    her   great    men  with   a  regrettable 


128  SUPERS 


tone  of  aunt- like  irritation,  which  betrays  her  into 
describing  Robespierre  as  a  "  quarrelsome  non- 
entity," and  missing  the  great  point  of  Mirabeau 
behind  what  she  airily  terms  his  "  gigantic  hum- 
bug." And  she  is  tempted  in  an  epilogue  to 
adorn  her  tale  with  some  extremely  dubious  morals. 
From  the  mildly  astonishing  conclusion  that  "  the 
immense  reforms  brought  about  during  the  revo- 
lutionary era  were  not  the  result  of  the  Revolution  ; 
it  was  to  the  King  and  his  enlightened  advisers 
.  .  .  that  the  reforms  in  government  were  primarily 
due,"  she  proceeds  to  the  more  perilous  considera- 
tion of  the  present  discontents.  "  Pacifists  and 
Internationalists  "  catch  it,  as  Mr.  Henry  James 
would  have  said,  so  quite  beautifully  hot,  and  the 
economic  breakdown  of  Eastern  Europe  is  heroically 
attributed  to  the  machinations  of  "  cosmopolitan 
Jewish  financiers,  who  hope  by  the  overthrow  of 
the  existing  order  to  place  all  capital  beneath 
their  own  control."  This  state  of  mind  is  on  a 
par  with  the  anti-German  fervour  of  her  "  O 
for  the  touch  of  a  Hidden  Hand  "  on  every  page 
of  history.  One  is  reminded  of  the  narrow 
temper  of  that  war-time  patriot  who  wished  to 
abolish  German  measles  and  to  rename  it  Pox 
Britannica. 

This  passion  for  the  detection  of  plots  at  all 
costs,  which  is  an  official  merit  in  policemen  and 
an  entertaining  accomplishment  in  the  by-paths 
of  historical  research,  may  become,  if  it  is  left 
unchecked,  an  obsession  leading  to  that  political 
persecution  mania  which  is  the  obsession  of  so 
many  bright  contemporary  minds. 


AN    AMERICAN 

YOUNG  James  Gallatin  was  an  American 
who  talked  about  waffles  and  terrapin ;  but, 
unlike  many  Americans,  he  had  ancestors.  On  the 
father's  side  James  was  a  Swiss  aristocrat,  which 
his  people  felt  acutely.  In  a  passage  of  more  than 
trans-Atlantic  snobbery  his  father  warned  James, 
if  he  decided  to  remain  in  America,  "  never  above 
all  things  to  forget  his  birth  and  the  duties  that 
birth  brings,  always  to  be  civil,  particularly  to 
those  who  were  not  his  equals  "  :  there  were  to  be 
no  flies  on  James.  But  in  the  dazzle  of  his  ancestors 
one  had  almost  forgotten  his  father.  Now  Pop 
was  an  American  diplomat,  and  thereby  hangs 
an  essay  by  Lord  Bryce.  Albert  Gallatin  was 
one  of  the  solemn  gentlemen  in  neck-cloths  who 
negotiated  in  1814  the  Peace  of  Ghent,  and 
restored  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  community  in  two 
continents  that  unaccountable  peace  which  passes 
all  understanding.  As  diplomacy  it  is  depressingly 
bourgeois,  but  as  an  excuse  for  James  Gallatin's 
first  visit  to  Europe  it  is  admirable.  Other  excuses 
were  subsequently  provided  by  the  State  Depart- 
ment, when  it  made  his  father  Ambassador  in  France 
and  England;  and  that  astonishing  young  man, 
who  acted  as  his  secretary,  was  definitely  loose  on 
European  society. 

James,  as  his  British  publisher  merrily  observed, 

9 


130  S  U  P  E  R  S 


"  was  a  gay  young  spark  in  Paris."  Even  Lord 
Brycc  expresses  the  opinion  that  he  was  "  not  so 
well  regulated "  as  his  sister  Frances ;  and  the 
comparison  does  the  young  lady  every  credit.  He 
went  to  St.  Petersburg  in  1813,  when  the  Emperor 
was  out  of  town  fighting  Napoleon  5  and  he  became 
the  shuttlecock  of  Anglo-American  diplomacy  from 
Russia  to  Amsterdam,  and  from  Amsterdam  to 
London.  James  was  shocked  at  the  spectacle  of 
Russian  alcoholism,  but  it  was  nothing  to  the 
English  Sunday. 

"  Englishwomen  are  not  pretty  ;  they  are  either 
coarse  or  very  delicate.  Complexions  fine,  but  too 
red  " — young  James  was  seventeen,  but  he  had  an 
eye.  *'  I  have  seen  the  Prince  Regent  walking  in 
the  Mall.  He  is  handsome  "  ;  James's  ideal  of  male 
beauty  would  seem  a  little  Vitellian,  and  his  own 
appearance  fell  far  below  the  standard  set  by 
H.R.H.  :  "  I  wore  a  suit  of  Chinese  nankin,  white 
silk  stockings,  high  white  choker,  with  a  breastpin 
of  seed-pearls  mother  gave  me  before  I  left  home. 
They  call  my  hair  auburn — I  call  it  red."  James 
moved  on  with  the  American  mission  to  Ghent 
— "  the  women  are  so  ugly  here  " — and  did  his 
diplomatic  duties. 

Then  began  his  real  life,  which  consisted  in 
meeting  every  one  in  Europe  and  making  imperti- 
nent comments  on  them.  James  in  his  diary  was 
as  pert  and  vivid  as  one  of  Mr.  Compton  Mac- 
kenzie's chorus-girls,  and  the  result  is  one  of  the 
most  amusing  works  of  minor  history  that  has  ever 
come  to  light.  His  tone  bears  an  uncanny  resem- 
blance to  the  American  pcrtness  of  Master  Ran- 
dolph  Miller  of  Schenectady,  as  it  was   observed 


AN      AMERICAN  131 


by  the  lake  at  Vevey  forty  years  ago  by  Mr.  Henry 
James's  contemplative  young  Bostonian.  That 
small  boy  of  nine,  with  "  an  aged  expression  of 
countenance,  a  pale  complexion,  and  sharp  fea- 
tures," who  played  the  enfant  terrible  in  the  tragedy 
of  his  sister  Daisy,  has  the  authentic  Gallatin 
ring.  They  must  often  have  said  of  James  in  the 
Gallatin  family  :  "  He  says  he  doesn't  care  much 
about  old  castles.  He's  only  nine.  He  wants  to 
stay  at  the  hotel.  Mother's  afraid  to  leave  him, 
and  the  courier  won't  stay  with  him  ;  so  we  haven't 
been  to  many  places." 

His  speciality  was  insolent  observation  of  the 
European  scene.  He  found  Napoleon  fat  and 
Madame  de  Stael  "  oddly  dressed,  seeming  to  have 
one  or  two  skirts  on  top  of  the  other."  Joseph 
Bonaparte  "  acts  as  if  he  were  still  King  of  Spain," 
and  Madame  Reeamier  "  is  beautiful,  but  I  could 
not  see  great  intelligence  in  her  face."  He  wrote 
a  page  of  his  diary  in  Voltaire's  chair  at  Ferney, 
and  Madame  de  Stael  called  him  "  Cupidon.'' 
Meanwhile  James's  father  went  solemnly  about 
Europe,  looking  up  his  ancestors  and  disapproving 
of  the  Bonapartes  for  being  so  middle-class.  There 
is  an  extremely  interesting  conversation  with  Napo- 
leon at  Elba,  in  which  the  Emperor,  "  suddenly 
recollecting  himself"  in  the  midst  of  a  political 
discussion,  said  :  "  Mais  ce  nest  pas  mon  affaire— 
je  suis  morty  The  gesture  was  borrowed  later, 
consciously  or  not,  by  the  Empress  Eugenie. 

Then  James  reached  Paris,  and  his  career  began 
in  earnest.  David  painted  him  as  Cupid,  and  "  I 
don't  think  father  will  approve  of  my  picture." 
These  were  the  days  when  Napoleon  was  marching 


132  SUPERS 


on  Paris  with  1,100  men,  and  James  walked  about 
the  streets  and  saw  men  turning  their  coats  as  he 
went.  The  Emperor  sent  for  Albert  Gallatin,  and 
was  distinctly  rude  to  him  when  he  declined  to  be 
drawn  on  the  subject  of  American  policy,  having 
evidently  forgotten  (those  Bonapartes  were  always 
bourgeois)  that  he  was  a  Swiss  aristocrat.  And  so 
the  diary  continues  for  fourteen  years  with  its 
delightful  blend  of  personal  and  political  comment. 
There  were  so  many  people  in  the  world  in  those 
days,  and  James's  insolent  appreciation  of  his 
surroundings  is  refreshingly,  boyishly  indiscreet. 
Madame  de  Boignc,  Talleyrand,  the  Bourbons,  the 
Prince  Regent  at  Brighton,  Canning,  and  innumer- 
able little  ladies  hurry  through  the  pages  of  this 
historical  Revue ;  and  Albert  Gallatin,  the  peace- 
maker, who  is  the  solemn  excuse  for  its  preserva- 
tion, appears  from  time  to  time,  thinking — like 
Lord  Burleigh. 


SUPERMEN 

I.     GENTLEMEN   ADVENTURERS 

KINO   FREDERICK   THE   GREAT 

KINO    LOUIS    PHILIPPE 

MR.    DISRAELI,    STATESMAN 

MR.    DISRAELI,    NOVELIST 

MR.    DISRAELI,    JOURNALIST 

MR.    DELANE 

M.  ADOLPHE  THIERS 

M.  LEON  GAMBETTTA 

GENERAL  WALKER 


KING    FREDERICK   THE    GREAT 

SOMEWIIERE  in  the  Canon  or  Apocryplia  of 
Mr.  II.  G.  Wells  there  are  some  assorted  reflec- 
tions which  might  be  profitably  digested  by  nearly 
all  historians,  as  well  as  by  those  exceptional  and 
gifted  critics  of  literature  who  can  read  as  well  as 
write.  They  deal,  in  that  staccato  intellectual 
shorthand  which  enables  Mr.  Wells  to  keep  more 
balls  in  the  air  at  one  time  than  any  other  contem- 
porary conjurer,  with  what  poor  Boon  called  "  the 
creation  of  countervailing  reputations,"  that  queer 
habit  of  competitive  panegyric  to  which  we  owe  the 
strongly  Napoleonic  flavour  of  the  Hindenburg 
legend,  the  Stevensonian  glories  of  Sir  James 
Barrie,  and  the  Gladstonian  prestige  of  Mr.  Asquith. 

"  The  Western  world  ripe  for  Great  Men  in  the 
early  nineteenth  century.  The  Germans  as  a 
highly  competitive  and  envious  people  take 
the  lead.  The  inflation  of  Schiller.  The  great- 
ness of  Goethe.  .  .  .  Resolve  of  the  Germans  to 
have  a  Great  Fleet,  a  Great  Empire,  a  Great 
Man.  Difficulty  in  finding  a  suitable  German 
for  Greatening.  Expansion  of  the  Goethe 
legend.  German  efficiency  brought  to  bear 
on  the  task.  Lectures,  Professors.  Goethe 
compared  to  Shakespeare.  Compared  to 
Homer.  Compared  to  Christ.  Compared  to 
God.     Discovered  to  be  incomparable.  .  .  . 

130 


136   GENTLEMEN   ADVENTURERS 


Stimulation  of  Scotch  activities.  .  .  .  The 
discovery  that  Burns  was  as  great  as  Shake- 
speare. Greater.  The  booming  of  Sir  Walter 
Scott.  Wake  up,  England  !  .  .  .  Victorian  age 
sets  up  as  a  rival  to  the  Augustan.  .  .  . 
Tennyson  as  Virgil.  .  .  . 

Longfellow  essentially  an  American 
repartee.  .  .  ." 

The  theory  is  not  so  wildly  improbable  as  Mr.  Wells's 
cheerful  advocacy  might  lead  an  elderly  intelligence 
to  believe.  Many  a  sound  doctrine  has  failed  to 
find  acceptance  because  its  nervous  parent  left  it 
on  the  workhouse  steps,  or  conquered  a  natural 
diffidence  by  launching  it  upon  the  world  with  the 
defiant  air  of  one  about  to  pull  the  neighbours'  bells 
and  run  away.  But  a  solemn  world  must  not  be 
misled  by  the  tone  of  truculent  originality  assumed 
by  the  author  of  The  Natural  History  of  Greatness 
into  dismissing  his  views  with  that  smile  which 
marks  the  incurable  frivolity  of  really  serious 
people.  Because  the  truth  is  sometimes  quite 
amusing,  too. 

The  historian's  gallery  is  full  of  examples  of  such 
competitive  imitation.  Sometimes  the  competitor 
is  the  man  himself;  and  in  such  cases  he  merely 
presents  the  spectacle,  familiar  to  fabulists,  of  the 
frog  stimulated  to  feats  of  abnormal  distension  by 
the  more  generous  contours  of  the  bull.  The  eye- 
glass of  Mr.  Austen  Chamberlain,  the  consciously 
Napoleonic  gestures  of  most  ordinary  persons  at 
any  crisis  in  the  history  of  their  bank,  administra- 
tion, or  trade  union,  and  the  unfortunate  mannerism 
of  that  King  of  Naples  who  used  deliberately  to 


KING    FREDERICK    THE    GREAT     137 


hunch  his  shoulder  on  parade  in  a  faint  hope  of 
being  taken  for  his  more  formidable  contemporary, 
the  King  of  Prussia,  are  all  instances,  more  or 
less  distressing,  of  the  same  habit  of  imitation. 

But  its  more  sinister  manifestations  are  those 
upon  which  Mr.  Wells  has  put  the  unerring  finger 
of  the  late  Boon.  These  are  the  cases  in  which 
the  imitative  colouring  is  deliberately  superim- 
posed by  a  third  party  as  a  conscious  set-off  to 
some  existing  reputation.  The  trick  springs  partly 
from  that  base  commercialism  which  is  for  ever 
thrusting  one  thing  upon  us,  whilst  pretending  all 
the  time  that  it  is  something  else.  It  has  poisoned 
the  pure  streams  of  historical  and  literary  criticism, 
like  a  chemical  works  fouhng  a  fishery ;  and  even 
the  clear  spring  of  geography,  that  virgin  science 
dwelling  alone  among  the  watersheds  and  wooed 
only  by  the  geometrical  embraces  of  Mr.  Belloc,  has 
hardly  escaped  the  vile  infection.  The  habit  of 
mind  which  can  bring  men  to  speak  of  the  Cornish 
Riviera,  the  Saxon  Switzerland,  and  the  Man- 
chester of  France  is  an  unpleasant  evidence  of  the 
same  device  which  leads  them  to  describe  Mr. 
Robert  W.  Service  as  the  Canadian  Kipling  and 
may  yet  encourage  them  to  stigmatize  Mr.  Kipling 
as  the  British  D'Annunzio. 

One  of  the  most  striking  instances  of  this  dis- 
tressing form  of  propaganda  is  the  organized  effort 
made  over  a  number  of  years  by  large  portions  of 
the  population  of  North  Germany  to  establish 
King  Frederick  the  Great  as  a  sort  of  Prussian 
repartee  to  the  reputation  of  the  Emperor  Napoleon. 
The  history  of  the  Seven  Years'  War  was  con- 
scientiously ransacked  for  parallels  to  every  incident 


138   GENTLEMEN  ADVENTURERS 

in  the  Napoleonic  mythology.  If  the  Emperor 
was  obstructed  by  an  irreverent  sentry,  the  King 
of  Prussia  must  needs  have  been  defied  by  a  dis- 
respectful miller.  If  the  Imperial  cavalry  was 
habitually  commanded  by  Murat  in  the  most  pre- 
posterous headgear,  Ziethen's  hussar  cap  is  dutifully 
magnified  to  more  than  Neapolitan  proportions  })y 
those  patriotic  historians  who  have  entered  their 
royal  master  for  this  exacting  competition  with 
the  Corsican  ogre.  Napoleon's  correspondence  was 
published  by  a  Bonaparte  in  thirty-two  volumes  : 
a  whole  dynasty  of  Hohenzollerns  promptly  coun- 
tered with  the  re-issue  of  Frederick's  in  thirty-six. 
The  Frederician  tricorne  was  given  a  Napoleonic 
tilt ;  and  illustrators  who  caught  him  with  a  royal 
hand  on  the  shoulders  of  a  Pomeranian  grenadier, 
set  his  fingers  groping  Napoleonically  upwards  for 
the  lobe  of  his  grognard^s  car.  And  so  the  game 
went  on.  If  Napoleon  had  taken  (which  he  did  not) 
the  faintest  interest  in  the  port  of  Kiel,  the  Preus- 
siche  Jahrbiicher  would  doubtless  have  restored  the 
balance  by  laying  down  two  Kiels  to  one.  And 
one  positively  wonders  that  no  enterprising  graduate 
of  the  University  of  Berlin  ever  managed  to  catch 
him  sleeping  before  the  battle  of  Rossbach  or 
marooned  him  for  a  short  time  on  an  Elba  in  the 
Baltic. 

But  the  significance  of  Frederick  is  not  in  the 
least  that  he  was  Napoleonic,  which  he  was  not. 
This  lean-faced,  elegant  little  atheist,  who  swung 
a  censer  before  the  altar  of  Voltaire  and  received 
extensive  presents  of  rococo  clocks  from  the  Pom- 
padour, was  typically  a  figure  of  the  Eighteenth 
Century.     lie  belongs  essentially  to  that  period  of 


KING    FREDERICK    THE    GREAT     1.39 

deportment,  in  which  the  occupation  of  tiic  states- 
man was  closely  allied  to  the  still  higher  calling  of 
the  dancing-master,  and  the  differences  of  nations 
were  adjusted  by  certain  formal  movements  of 
small  professional  armies  resembling  almost  equally 
the  square  dances  of  the  ballroom  and  the  gentle- 
manly exercises  of  the  duelling-ground.  That  is  why 
the  point  of  him  is  so  completely  missed  in  any 
attempt  to  run  his  career  into  the  larger  mould  of 
the  post-Revolutionary  era,  when  Governments 
said  what  they  meant  with  the  most  indelicate 
emphasis,  and  whole  nations  were  locked  in 
strikingly  inelegant  struggles  for  their  existence. 

The  value  of  this  little  figure  of  Frederick  as  a 
summary  of  the  whole  tone  of  his  century  was 
debated  and  (at  considerable  length)  exploited  by 
Carlyle,  whose  writings  are  avoided  by  the  present 
generation,  which  cannot  read  Scotsmen,  under  the 
false  pretence  that  he  was  really  a  German.  The 
great  tapestry  into  which  he  angrily  wove  that 
period  in  which  the  continent  of  Europe  was  con- 
verted into  a  large  drawing-room,  is  one  of  the 
soundest  and  most  elaborate  pieces  of  historical 
research  and  description  ever  made. 

Just  as  philosophy  is  the  study  of  other  people's 
misconceptions,  so  history  is  the  study  of  other 
people's  mistakes.  They  are  mostly  the  mistakes 
of  historians,  who  in  their  habit  of  erring  are  almost 
human.  There  is  a  popular  error  with  an  increasing 
circle  of  popularity  to  the  effect  that  the  Eighteenth 
Century  was  a  barren  period.  It  is  typical  of  the 
Victorian  snobbery  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  that 
it  denied  its  own  father  because  he  looked  like  a 
walking  gentleman  in  a  costume-play.     The  illusion 


140   GENTLEMEN   ADVENTURERS 

of  futility  was  fostered  by  the  circumstance  that 
the  Eighteenth  Century  dressed  lamentably  well  and 
had  deplorably  good  manners.  It  was  assumed  by 
solemn  gentlemen  in  black  coats  that  a  generation 
which  could  furnish  its  rooms  could  not  conceivably 
furnish  its  mind  ;  and  we  were  given  to  understand 
that  the  century  of  the  three  Georges  was  passed  in 
a  genial  blend  of  alcohohsm  and  deportment.  It  is 
an  unfortunate  impression,  because  that  century  laid 
the  foundations  of  modern  England.  It  may  have 
laid  them  a  little  gaily,  between  minuets  ;  but,  how- 
ever light-minded  its  recreations  may  have  been, 
it  undoubtedly  laid  them.  Industrialism,  econ- 
omics, and  political  Radicalism  were  all  produced  by 
the  age  of  the  six-bottle  men ;  and  the  honest  his- 
torian is  bound  to  admit  that  everything  that  is 
modern  is  eighteenth-century,  just  as  the  honest 
furniture  dealer  is  driven  by  his  conscience  to 
confess  that  nearly  everything  that  is  eighteenth- 
century  is  modern. 

The  period  which  was  pregnant  with  the  American 
Republic  and  the  French  Revolution  produced  the 
most  modern  of  all  the  seven  plagues  of  Europe, 
the  temper  of  Prussia.  The  Eighteenth  Century 
was  the  school  of  all  diplomacy  ;  but  above  all  it 
was  the  nursery  of  Prussian  diplomacy.  In  the 
month  of  August,  1914,  when  several  Prussians  were 
detected  in  public  mitruth,  English  opinion  was 
directed  in  its  search  for  precedents  to  the  writings 
of  an  academic  person  named  Treitschke  and  a 
commander  of  cavalry  named  Bernhardi.  Since  the 
people  of  England  had  been  seized  with  an  unusual 
desire  to  read  something  about  foreigners,  it  was 
perhaps  fortunate  that  the  works  of  these  writers 


KING    FREDERICK    THE    GREAT     141 

were  available  in  English  translations.  But  it 
was  hardly  the  proper  place  to  look  for  the  origins 
of  Prussian  policy,  because  you  do  not  find  the 
roots  of  a  tree  amongst  its  higher  branches.  It 
is  not  so  long  since  Prussian  history  began  ;  and 
there  are  present  in  the  beginnings  of  Prussian 
history  all  the  elements  which  have  recently  become 
familiar.  It  was  the  discovery  of  Horace  that  there 
were  heroes  before  Agamemnon ;  and  it  remains 
for  some  English  historian  still  unborn  to  reveal 
to  our  posterity  that  there  were  Germans  before 
Bismarck.  Before  Nietzsche  and  Treitschke  there 
was  Frederick  the  Great.  He  ruled  Prussia  for 
half  a  century,  and  in  a  series  of  three  wars  he  made 
that  country  one  of  the  great  Powers  of  Europe. 
His  diplomacy  was  frankly  mendacious  ;  and  when 
in  the  first  year  of  his  reign  he  got  his  first  oppor- 
tunity of  violating  the  peace  of  Europe,  he  took  it 
in  twenty-seven  days.  It  is  possibly  more  instruc- 
tive to  study  the  proceedings  of  the  greatest  King 
of  Prussia  than  to  read  the  lectures  of  the  innumer- 
able gentlemen  of  the  same  nationality  who  have 
conceived  it  to  be  the  duty  of  a  professor  to  teach 
the  young  idea  how  to  shoot  upon  insufficient 
provocation. 

The  whole  world  outside  the  charmed  circle  of 
Copenhagen  and  Amsterdam  was  busily  engaged  for 
five  years  in  demonstrating  that  there  is  nothing 
original  in  Germany  except  its  original  sin.  The 
exercise  was  enjoyable,  and  since  England  has  always 
appreciated  destructive  criticism  as  a  legitimate 
form  of  sport,  it  was  extremely  popular.  Exhuming 
Goethe  was  almost  as  entertaining  as  killing 
Keats.     It  was  delightful  to  observe  the  antics  of 


142   GENTLEMEN   ADVENTURERS 


philosophers  shunning  the  feet  of  innumerable 
Gamaliels,  and  the  musicians  have  grown  as  sus- 
])ieious  of  their  old  masters  as  pieture  dealers.  A 
Major-Gcneral  even  hinted  that  the  42-centimetre 
howitzer  was  an  Austrian  invention,  and  the  great 
Germans  all  became  Swedes  or  Swiss.  But  there 
is  one  invention  to  which  the  Prussian  claim  has 
never  been  denied,  and  that  is  the  peculiar  blend 
of  legitimate  ambition  with  illegitimate  methods 
which  is  known  as  RealpoUtik.  The  original 
specification  is  probably  to  be  found  among  the 
papers  of  an  Italian  author  of  quotations  named 
Maechiavelli.  Professor  Chamberlain,  whose  popu- 
larity has  somewhat  unaccountably  waned  in  this 
country,  has  probably  demonstrated  that  this  so- 
called  Florentine  had  a  thick  neck  and  butter- 
coloured  hair ;  perhaps  his  Tuscan  was  a  shade 
guttural.  At  any  rate,  even  if  Maechiavelli  was 
not  himself  of  pronouncedly  Teutonic  type,  his 
ingenious  invention  has  received  in  North  Germany 
such  substantial  additions  that  it  has  definitely 
become  a  Prussian  patent.  Frederick  or  Bismarck 
could  probably  defend  with  complete  success  any 
patent  action  that  the  misguided  Italian  might 
bring  against  them.  RealpoUtik  is  in  reality  the 
diplomacy  of  the  Eighteenth  Century  ;  it  belongs  to 
the  period  before  nationalism  had  arisen  to  prohibit 
partitions,  and  when  preventive  wars  were  the  com- 
mon exercise  of  nations.  Modern  diplomacy  is  a 
good  way  behind  its  times.  Among  Englishmen  it 
has  just  reached  the  vague  nationalism  which  per- 
vaded Europe  between  1848  and  the  collapse  of  the 
Second  Empire  ;  but  in  Prussia  it  belongs  purely  to 
the  Eighteenth  Century.     The  invasion  of  Belgium 


KING    FREDERICK    THE    GREAT     143 


was  purely  Frcdcrician  ;  the  Turkish  alhancc  was 
the  normal  expedient  of  the  ministers  of  Louis 
XV  ;  and  Dr.  von  Bethmann-IIollweg  could  have 
opened  his  heart  to  Kaunitz. 

Prussian  policy  entered  European  history  with 
the  suddenness  of  a  bad  fairy  in  the  late 
autumn  of  1740,  when  Frederick  became  King  of 
Prussia.  That  young  man  ascended  the  throne 
with  the  most  sinister  of  all  reputations — a  name 
for  bad  verse.  Politically  he  appeared  to  be  an 
enlightened  pacifist  with  a  strong  moral  bias 
against  Macchiavelli,  But  promotion,  which  was 
powerless  to  improve  his  verse,  debased  his  morals  ; 
and  in  the  first  year  of  his  reign,  within  four 
weeks  of  his  first  opportunity,  he  committed 
a  European  crime.  He  invaded  Silesia  in  direct 
contravention  of  the  written  guarantee  of  his 
Government.  Since  he  was  a  humorist  and  had 
excellent  manners,  he  offered  to  protect  his  victim 
against  any  other  criminal  whom  he  might  meet ; 
and  for  the  next  forty-six  years  Prussian  policy 
was  conducted  on  the  lines  laid  down  by  the  best 
contemporary  highwayman.  Various  coaches  were 
stopped,  with  the  assistance  of  various  allies,  and 
it  was  occasionally  convenient  to  turn  king's 
evidence.  An  English  writer  has  referred  to  his 
"  royal  Larkinism,"  but  he  was  surely  confusing 
Mr.  James  Larkin  with  Mr.  Richard  Turpin. 

The  amateur  of  Frederick  will  find  little  to  revise 
in  his  old  Carlylcan  impression  of  the  European 
scene  and  the  Prussian  actors  in  it.  Once  more, 
as  in  the  more  familiar  case  of  Gibbon,  the  imagina- 
tion of  genius  would  appear  to  have  anticipated 
the  conclusions  of  research  ;  and  the  utmost  that 


144   GENTLEMEN  ADVENTURERS 

industrious  young  men  can  achieve  to-day  in  the 
archives  of  Berhn  and  Vienna  is  to  confirm  the 
conjectures  of  an  irritable  old  man  in  Chelsea  in 
the  early  Sixties.  Perhaps  one  of  them  will  one 
day  produce  a  study  of  Frederick  William  I,  the 
Philip  of  this  rococo  Alexander,  whose  achievement 
in  the  direction  of  Prussian  policy  and  the  con- 
struction of  a  Prussian  army  was  infinitely  more 
valuable  than  the  more  advertised  career  of  his 
predecessor,  the  Great  Elector,  and  was  at  least 
as  important  for  Germany  and  Europe  as  the 
work  which  Frederick  himself  was  enabled  to  do 
on  the  foundations  that  his  father  had  laid. 

But  one  is  always  glad  to  read  books  about 
Frederick,  if  only  for  the  memories  which  they 
revive.  There  are  some  books  which  set  a  man 
groping  blindly  up  the  dusty  corridors  of  his  intel- 
lectual past ;  and  with  the  belated  study  of  a  life  of 
Frederick  the  Great  one  almost  recovers — it  is  a 
gorgeous  sensation — the  fine  frenzy  of  the  Early 
Days,  of  those  autumn  evenings  in  1914  when  one 
used  to  read  the  communiques  (how  strange  the  word 
looked  !)  of  a  Mr.  F.  E.  Smith  not  yet  ennobled, 
upon  the  operations  of  a  Sir  John  French  not  yet 
enshrined.  In  those  days  the  country,  which  had 
embarked  in  August  on  a  war  of  honour  and  policy, 
found  itself  by  the  exigencies  of  the  autumn  pub- 
lishing season  engaged  in  a  war  of  ideas  ;  and  the 
pens  of  England  were  levelled  in  a  thin,  black 
line  at  the  oncoming  squadrons  of  iniquity  led  by 
the  sinister  trinity  of  Nietzsche,  Treitschkc,  and 
Bernhardi.  Someone  even  made  quite  a  lot  of 
money  by  blandly  republishing  those  chapters  of 
The  Decline  and  Fall  which  relate  to  the  unsucccss- 


KING    FllEDEllICK    THE    GREAT     145 

ful  enterprise  of  Attila,  and  the  public  intelligence 
was  rotten-ripe  to  receive  revelations  of  the 
cynical  depravity  of  Frederick  the  Great.  But 
none  came. 

It  was  notorious  to  any  leader-writer  with  the 
strength  to  quote  Macaulay's  Essays,  that  he  had 
invaded  Silesia  without  extenuating  circumstances 
(the  foolish  man  did  not  even  realize  the  mining 
prospects  of  the  region) ;  and  it  was  very  generally 
felt  that  he  was  in  some  w^ay  the  father  of  the 
Prussian  evil,  in  spite  of  the  distressing  fact  that 
British  policy  had  rendered  every  assistance  to 
this  disreputable  paternity.  Yet  nervous  propa- 
gandists quailed  before  the  backs  of  Carlyle's  six  (or, 
in  some  editions,  eight)  volumes,  and  the  Iliad  of 
Frederieian   naughtiness  remained  unsung. 

But  it  is  an  unfortunate  irony  that  has  delayed 
the  publication  of  any  new  biography  of  Frederick 
until  the  iron,  which  the  historian  might  have 
struck  when  it  was  so  beautifully  hot,  is  already 
cooling  in  the  air  of  a  less  fevered  day.  The  ambiti- 
ous biographer,  as  a  more  gifted  writer  might  say 
in  a  City  column,  is  caught  a  bear  of  Hohcnzollerns  ; 
in  the  Miscellaneous  Market  Huns  arc  rather  a 
languid  feature  (what  a  gift  they  have  in  Throg- 
morton  Street  for  rich,  pictorial  metaphor  !),  and 
Attila  closed  soft. 

That  is  why  it  seems  rather  a  pity  that  a  brilliant 
young  man  is  upon  us,  nearly  twelve  months  after 
the  closing  of  the  Ministry  of  Information,  with  the 
discovery  that  "  Frederick's  military  reputation 
was  in  excess  of  his  deserts,  owing  to  misrepre- 
sentations made  by  himself  or  by  others  on  his 
behalf.  .  .  .  He  lived  in  a  chronic  state  of  prcma- 

10 


14G   GENTLEMEN   ADVENTURERS 

ture  despair  .  .  .  and  indulged  freely  in  tears  .  .  . 
on  the  battlefield  he  gave  several  exhibitions  of 
cowardice  ...  he  ordered  the  refusal  of  quarter, 
treated  prisoners  and  wounded  with  inhumanity, 
bombarded  cathedrals  and  cut  down  fruit  trees  : 
and  received  from  his  contemporaries  the  name 
of  the  '  Attila  of  the  North.'  " 

This  has  the  ripe,  authentic  tang  of  the  vintage 
of  1914.  One  hangs  breathlessly  on  the  historian's 
lips  to  hear  the  tale  of  how  Frederick  flung  a  sneer 
at  Maria  Theresa's  "  contemptible  little  army," 
ordered  his  submarine  commanders  to  sink  the 
Saxon  food-ships  at  sight,  and  sent  Montgolfiers 
to  drop  grenades  on  the  most  populous  portions  of 
Vienna.  Instead,  one  finds  only  rather  tittering 
anecdotes  about  his  bad  style,  his  aversion  for 
washing,  and  his  neglect  to  shave. 

It  was  not  easy  for  a  son  to  survive  the  paternity 
of  Frederick  William  I ;  but  he  achieved  it.  It  was 
not  simple  to  fight  the  Prussian  corner  through  the 
Seven  Years'  War,  to  stand  up  against  Russia, 
France,  and  Austria  with  no  more  substantial  ally 
than  British  sea-power,  of  which  no  Admiral 
Mahan  had  yet  explained  the  sovereign  qualities 
to  an  obedient  world  ;  but  he  managed  it,  living, 
as  they  say,  from  hand  to  mouth — and  if,  as  his 
biographers  delight  to  tell  us,  it  was  sometimes  a 
shaking  hand  and  a  wry  mouth,  one  is  not  really  so 
very  surprised.  It  was  not  child's  play  to  recreate 
Prussia  into  a  position  of  European  significance 
after  the  war  was  won  :  the  reconstruction  of  vic- 
torious countries  has  since  that  day  been  worse 
done  by  better  men  than  Frederick.  But  his 
biographers  show  a  singular  lack  of  interest  in  the 


KING    FREDERICK    THE    GREAT     147 

administrative  achievement  of  the  twenty  years  of 
peace  which  Ibrm  the  second  and  less  dramatic 
chapter  of  his  reign.  It  is  a  pity,  because  Frederick 
was  never  more  the  Hohenzollern  in  his  versatility 
or  more  the  German  in  his  thoroughness.  But 
perhaps  our  historians  feel  that  he  was  not  quite 
sufficiently  the  Hun. 

The  final  interest  of  the  Frederician  epopee  lies 
in  the  fact  that  the  king  was  the  fine  flower  of 
European  monarchy  in  its  later  form.     Kingship, 
which  had  resulted  in  the  first  instance  from  the 
hero-worship    of    primitive    times,    waned    like    a 
candle  in  the  dawn  before  the  fierce  sunlight  of  the 
later  Reformation.     The  units  which  composed  the 
European    state-system    became   too   large   in   the 
early  Seventeenth  Century  to  be  manipulated  by  a 
single  pair  of  hands.    The  increasing  complexity  of 
the    world    dictated    the    relegation    of   important 
duties  to  mere  ministers  at  the  same  time  as  philo- 
sophers were  beginning  to  feel  what  Mr.  Max  Beer- 
bohm  has  called  "  a  horrid  doubt  as  to  the  Divine 
Right."     But  in  a  final  effort  monarchy  returned 
upon  Europe  in  a  new  form.     If  the  king  could  not 
be  the  tallest,  the  strongest,  or  the  richest  man  in 
his  kingdom,  he  would  at  least  be  socially  supreme. 
The  thing  began  with  the  unamiable  posturings  of 
Louis  XIV,  and  radiated  from  Versailles  through 
the  Western  world.     It  was  perhaps  typical  of  the 
age  of  deportment  that  it  expressed  its  veneration 
of  its  masters  in  the  niceties  of  etiquette  rather 
than  by  the  clashing  of  sword-blades  upon  shields. 
Such  was  the  seed-bed  which  produced  the  revival 
of  kingship  in  the  middki  Eighteenth  Century,  when 
France,  Russia,  Prussia,  Austria,  Spain,  Portugal, 


148  GENTLEMEN   ADVENTURERS 

Naples,  Piedmont,  and  Tuscany  slowly  pirouetted, 
each  to  the  tune  of  its  single  dynast,  and  even 
England  stumbled  into  the  measure  played  by  King 
George  III.  Of  this  time  and  temper  Frederick  is 
almost  the  most  typical  product.  His  intellectual 
liaison  with  Voltaire  ranked  him  with  that  crowned 
Intelligentzia  of  which  the  Empress  Catharine  was 
the  most  entertaining  and  the  Emperor  Joseph  the 
most  industrious  member ;  and  that  blend  of  absolut- 
ism and  enlightenment,  which  led  him  to  gratify 
a  passion  for  administrative  detail  in  the  intervals 
of  playing  on  the  flute  and  composing  Alexandrine 
verse,  was  characteristic  to  the  last  degree. 

He  reigned  for  forty-six  years  ;  and  when  he  died, 
the  storm  of  the  Bastille  was  only  three  years 
distant,  and  men  must  almost  have  heard  the  sound 
of  the  tumbrils  coming  up  the  wind.  There  was 
not  a  king  left  in  Europe  to  hold  the  pass  for  king- 
ship. The  fumbling  intellectualism  of  Austria, 
the  dullness  of  that  heavy  man,  France,  Prussia 
with  his  mystics  and  his  bigamy,  England's  alterna- 
tions of  rusticity  and  mental  collapse,  Naples  who 
kept  an  eating-house  incognito,  the  stupid  Spain 
who  offered  himself  to  the  pictorial  obloquy  of 
Goya  and  never  noticed  the  caricature — these  were 
hardly  the  men  to  stand  up  against  the  burning 
wind  that  swept  from  the  Place  dc  la  Revolution 
across  Europe.  For  the  last  of  the  kings  had  died 
in  a  room  at  Potsdam. 


KING    LOUIS    PHILIPPE 

WHEN  an  inquiring  posterity  reads  Tono- 
Bungay  (or  "The  Swiss  Family  Wliit- 
taker  ")  in  order  to  see  how  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  found 
his  way  about  one  of  Mr.  Arnold  Bennett's  hotels,  it 
will  discover,  as  one  generally  does,  an  extremely  in- 
teresting passage  about  something  else.  Mr.  Edward 
Ponderevo,  whose  bankruptcy  proceedings  were 
initiated  in  order  to  discover  under  which  particular 
thimble  the  pea  was  at  that  moment  secreted  and 
subsequently  became  a  leading  case  because  it  was 
found  that  there  was  no  pea,  was  at  one  moment  of 
his  career  an  ardent  Napoleonist.  He  collected,  as 
we  are  told,  the  more  convex  portraits  of  the  great 
artillerist,  and  was  frequently  observed  to  stand  in 
profile  against  windows  with  the  hand  of  Monte- 
notte  thrust  into  the  waistcoat  of  Wagram  about 
as  far  up  as  the  knuckles  of  Aspern-Essling.  Now  a 
Napoleonist,  as  any  antique-dealer  will  tell  you,  is 
a  thing  totally  distinct  from  a  Bonapartist.  Bona- 
partists  are  persons  of  simple  faith  (but  not  neces- 
sarily Norman  blood),  wiiose  loyalty  has  survived 
successive  transfers  to  a  slack-minded  Romantic 
with  a  Spanish  wife,  an  anaemic  young  gentleman 
at  Sandhurst,  and  a  commissioned  officer  in  the 
Russian  army.  They  preach  the  remarkable  doc- 
trine of  salvation  by  plebiscite,  and  they  believe, 
as  the  late  President  Lincoln  so  justly  and  so  nearly 

149 


150  GENTLEMEN   ADVENTURERS 

remarked,    in   government   by   the    Eagle   for   the 
Eagle. 

But  the  Napoleonist  is  a  far  more  complex  and 
dangerous  phenomenon.  He  collects  things.  They 
may  be  discarded  epaulettes,  spent  bullets  from  the 
Moscow  campaign,  or  the  theses  of  American  pro- 
fessors ;  but  if  they  are  connected  in  any  particular 
with  the  Gi'ande  Armee,  he  acquires  them  with  the 
silent  persistence  of  those  old  gentlemen  in  Henry 
James  who  accumulated  florid  Continental  furni- 
ture with  the  impeccably  bad  taste  of  nineteenth- 
century  culture.  When  the  bridges  were  breaking 
at  the  Beresina,  his  ancestor  was  probably  running 
up  and  down  the  bank  looking  for  splinters  to  pre- 
serve as  relics.  He  has,  so  to  say,  the  Bees  in  his 
bonnet ;  and  if  he  were  asked  suddenly  for  his 
name  by  the  catechist,  he  would  probably  reply 
that  it  was  N  with  a  little  crown  on  top.  That  is 
precisely  what  happened  to  Mr.  Ponderevo. 

This  fancied  resemblance  to  great  men  is  one  of 
the  oddest  tricks  of  human  imagination.  It  resides 
originally  in  the  desire  of  a  person  to  add  a  syllable 
to  his  stature  and  become  a  personage.  There 
was  an  imbecile  King  of  Naples  (there  were  several) 
who  humped  his  shoulder  and  twisted  his  neck 
and  even  cultivated  that  hunted  eye  which  comes 
from  spending  seven  years  on  the  road  between 
one's  Eastern  and  one's  Western  fronts,  in  order 
solely  to  look  like  Frederick  the  Great.  The 
oddest  thing  about  the  sedulous  ape  is  that  he 
always  selects  for  imitation  those  characters  whose 
value  is  more  meretricious  than  substantial.  One 
knows  scores  of  City  men  who  thought  that  they 
were  like  Mr.  Chamberlain  :  but  there  is  no  recorded 


KING       LOUIS       PHILIPPE  151 


instance  of  a  stockbroker  with  a  fancied  resemblance 
to  Lord  Shaftesbury.  It  is  the  tragedy  of  French 
history  that  it  has  produced  several  people  who 
thought  they  were  like  Napoleon,  and  nobody  who 
thought  he  was  like  Louis  Philippe  :  it  is  a  pity. 
A  resemblance  to  Napoleon  made  a  failure  of 
Plon-Plon,  and  remained  a  comparatively  blind-alley 
occupation  until  the  advent  of  the  cinematograph 
afforded  a  crowded  and  competitive  avenue  of 
employment.  But  a  resemblance  to  Louis  Philippe 
is  a  guarantee  of  a  sound  and  serviceable  article, 
suitable  for  domestic  use.  He  was  the  sort  of 
monarch  who  is  useful  about  the  house.  Some- 
times he  was  more  than  a  trifle  suburban  :  that  is 
where  the  Napoleon  of  Peace  comes  nearest  to  the 
Napoleon  of  Notting  Hill. 

Louis  Philippe,  if  one  may  draw  up  for  a  moment 
before  that  neglected  career  like  an  erratic  train 
before  a  deserted  halt,  is  one  of  the  few  successes 
that  give  all  the  impression  of  failure.  He  was  an 
arriviste  who  arrived  ;  but  one  never  realizes  it. 
Like  Napoleon  he  died  in  exile,  and  like  General 
Seely  he  saved  life  from  drowning.  But  somehow 
one  never  sees  him  set  with  that  splendid  company 
on  the  high  and  windy  stage  of  fame.  He  was  once 
a  teacher  of  geography,  which  brings  him  near  to 
Mr.  Belloc  ;  and  he  reconstructed  the  Palace  of 
Versailles,  which  reminds  one  of  Louis  XIV.  He 
filled  several  caricatures  by  Daumier,  and  he  was 
at  one  time  Mr.  Disraeli's  ideal  of  regal  deportment. 
But  one  feels  that  he  will  never  figure  in  a  symbolical 
picture  by  Mr.  Goctze  or  be  impersonated  by  ^Ir. 
Dennis  Eadie.  Perhaps  it  is  because  of  his  un- 
doubted family  virtues,  or  because  his  jloruit  was 


152   GENTLEMEN   ADVENTURERS 

circa  1840,  or  because  he  omitted  to  shave  the  sides 
of  his  face.     But  in  spite  of  his  pictorial  disadvan- 
tages,  which   must   have  been  acutely   present  to 
the  mind  of  a  romantic  novelist,  his  biography  was 
written,  if  not  by  the  hand,  at  least  in  the  atelier 
of  Dumas.     When   a  pusillanimous   executive  en- 
deavoured to  raise  revenue  by  imposing  a  tax  on 
feuilletons,  the  managing  director  of  the  syndicate 
that  traded  in  the  name  of  Dumas  pire  was  not 
to  be  defeated  by  this  dastardly  attempt  to  increase 
his  cost  of  production.    He  abandoned  the  feuilleton, 
substituted  popular  history  for  popular  fiction,  and 
produced  tax-free  studies  of  Louis  XIV,  Louis  XV, 
and   Louis   Philippe.     Dumas   was   always   a  trifle 
ridiculous  when  he  was  political,  and  his  history  has 
a  strong  flavour  of  his   incredible  address  to  the 
electors  of  the  Yonne  :  "  Citizens,  I  am  the  son  of  the 
Republican  General,  Alexandre  Dumas,  one  of  the 
most  admirable  children  of  the  first  Revolution  ; 
I  am  the  author  of  The  Three  Musketeers,  that  is  to 
say,  one  of  the  most  national  books,  both  in  matter 
and  colouring,  which  our  literature  contains.    Thus 
introduced,  I  solicit  your  support  as  representative 
of  the  Department  of  the  Yonne.*'     His  tone  and 
attitude   were   always   a  trifle   reminiscent   of  the 
comic  Frenchman  in  a  British  play  produced  during 
a  period  of  acute  Gallophobia  ;  and  as  the  biographer 
of  Louis  Philippe  he  sometimes  found  it  necessary 
to  insert  in  that  career  the  flourishes  which  his 
subject  had  inartistically  omitted. 

The  King  of  the  French,  like  so  many  heroes  of 
romance,  was  somcw^hat  unfortunate  in  his  father. 
His  parentage  was  even  doubted  by  a  lady  called 
Maria  Stella  Petronilla,  who  lived  in  the  Apennines 


KING       LOUIS       PHILIPPE  153 


and  maintained  heroically,  in  face  of  all  the  circum- 
stances, that  he  was  really  a  girl.     One  is  reminded 
of    those    indomitable    controversialists    who    are 
always   comforted   by   the   conviction   that   Queen 
Elizabeth    was    really    a    red-headed    village    boy. 
In  the  years  which  separated  the  American  from 
the  French  Revolution  he  lived  a  life  of  juvenile 
elegance,  until  the  movement  of  fashion  was  sus- 
pended by  the  birth  of  a  nation,  as  a  Mr.  Griffiths 
has  taught  us  to  call  something  far  less  important 
which  is  believed  to  have  taken  place  subsequently 
on  the  Temperance  side   of  the   Atlantic.     There 
was   a  peasant   insurrection   in   France,   an   urban 
revolution   in   Paris,    and   a   clerical   rising   in   the 
Austrian  Netherlands,  which  an  unwary  translator 
or  an  unskilled  workman  on  Dumas'  night-shift  has 
described    as   "  this    insurrection   of  the   Austrians 
against  the  Belgians."    The  Duke  of  Orleans  arrived, 
in  anticipation  of  the  Emperor  Napoleon,  at  the 
conviction  that  God  is  on  the  side  of  the  big  batta- 
lions ;   and  deciding  that  there  were  more  French 
subjects  than  French   Bourbons,  he  joined,  in  the 
electioneering  sense,  the  great  majority.     His  son 
wrote  a  letter  to  Marat's  newspaper  and  became 
usher  of  the  Jacobins'  Club.     There  was  a  man  of 
the  name  of  Robespierre  who  wore  striped  waist- 
coats and  looked  after  the  Strangers'  Gallery ;  and 
it  was  the  privilege  of  the  young  gentleman  who 
was  to  be  King  of  the  French  to  call  for  silence  for 
almost  all  the  men  of  the  Revolution.     In  the  year 
1791  one  could   be  elegant  about  the  regeneration 
of  humanity.     He  wrote  gracefully  to  Madame   de 
Gcnlis  :    "  Tlie  two  things  I  care  most  for  in  all  the 
world  are  the  new  Constitution  and  you."     But  as 


154   GENTLEMEN   ADVENTURERS 


the  Revolution  dropped  to  a  deeper  note,  it  became 
less  easy  for  a  prince  to  include  it  in  his  range. 
The  young  Louis  Philippe,  in  an  effort  to  retain 
his  loyalty,  became  military  and  went  to  Metz  with 
Kcllermann.  Dumas  does  unexpected  justice  to 
the  reputation  of  Dumouricz  ;  and  Valmy,  where 
Louis  Philippe  commanded  a  division  vmder  Kcller- 
mann, is  accurately  described  except  for  the  inser- 
tion of  an  infantry  contact  which  never  happened. 
But  a  novelist  could  no  more  tolerate  a  battle  which 
was  won  because  the  weather  was  wet  and  the 
Prussians  had  eaten  sour  grapes  than  Victor  Hugo 
could  resist  the  sunk  road  of  Ohain,  when  he  flashed 
the  battle  of  Waterloo  on  to  the  screen  in  the  later 
stages  of  Les  Miserables.  Seven  months  later  the 
desertion  of  Dumouricz  carried  the  young  man 
across  the  Belgian  frontier ;  and  Louis  Philippe, 
who  in  many  ways  resembled  the  hero  of  the 
Odyssey,  began  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Mons  the 
long  wandering  that  was  to  end  in  the  drawing- 
room  Monarchy  of  July.  He  assumed,  with  a 
foreigner's  incapacity  to  form  a  serious  English 
name,  the  egregious  appellation  of  "  Mr.  Corby," 
and  eventually  sailed  from  Hamburg  for  the  United 
States.  The  King  of  the  French  shares  with  the 
King  of  Westphalia  the  distinction  of  an  American 
W under jahr ;  Jerome  and  Louis  Philippe  passed 
from  Poughkeepsie  to  a  throne.  It  is  a  singular 
career ;  and  only  the  active  intervention  of  the 
French  people  in  the  year  1848  secured  that  it 
was  not  plural. 


MR.    DISRAELI,    STATESMAN 

WITH  the  education  of  contemporary  taste,  the 
resemblance  of  Lord  Beaconsficld  to  Mr. 
MantaHni  is  becoming  noticeable  even  to  members 
of  the  Primrose  League.  The  Suez  Canal  shares 
show  a  comfortable  profit  of  nine  hundred  per  cent., 
the  Treaty  of  Berlin  has  not  yet  been  seen  through 
by  more  than  half  the  population  of  the  Balkan 
Peninsula,  and  a  living  dramatist  has  approached 
the  theme  if  not  with  the  Nelson,  at  least  with 
the  Parker  touch.  But  there  is  a  regrettable  and 
increasing  tendency  on  the  part  of  posterity  to  be 
irreverent  about  a  statesman  who  appears  to  have 
borrowed  his  haute  politique  from  Mr.  William  Lc 
Queux,  and  his  haute  finance  from  the  New  Witness. 
One  feels  in  the  cold  light  of  this  sweeter,  simpler 
reign  that  there  is  a  faintly  disreputable  air  of  Early 
Victorian  raffishness  about  that  singular  career. 
There  is  something  the  matter  with  his  period.  One 
may  respect  almost  any  Zeitgeist,  if  only  it  will  not 
wear  ridiculous  clothes.  But  when  it  comes  with 
its  head  wreathed  in  wax  flowers  and  its  hands  full 
of  scraps  of  papier-mache,  casting  mother  of  pearl 
before  swine,  enthusiasms  arc  apt  to  grow  a  trifle 
faint,  and  even  collectors  of  bric-a-brac  turn  sadly  in 
other  directions.  Which  is  the  worst  of  the  Great 
Victorians. 

The  broad  outline  of  Disraeli's  career  is  respect- 

155 


156   GENTLEMEN   ADVENTURERS 


able,  and  even  distinguished ;  but  its  detail  is  appall- 
ing. That  is  why  the  call  of  the  multiple  watch- 
chain  is  growing  fainter,  and  the  visual  appeal  of 
bottle-green  trousering  is  beginning  to  fail  across 
the  grey  distances  of  the  North  Temperate  Zone. 
The  fatal  elegance  of  that  coiffure  has  shocked  a 
generation  which  prefers  its  heroes  bald  ;  and  it  is 
not  easy  to  respect  a  statesman  who  habitually 
thought  of  the  upper  classes  like  an  upper  servant. 
In  his  Life  one  is  perpetually  overhearing  asides 
which  sound  less  like  the  confessions  of  an  ex- 
Minister  than  the  comments  of  a  retired,  if  slightly 
cynical,  butler.  But  for  all  that,  it  was  a  great 
career  informed  by  a  magnificent,  if  inaccurate, 
imagination.  For  Disraeli,  w^hether  in  his  novels  or 
his  politics,  dukes  were  perpetually  coming  down 
to  breakfast  in  full  Garter  robes,  whilst  the  ancestral 
standard  was  run  up  on  the  Norman  keep  and  a 
brass  band  crashed  out  the  National  Anthem  in 
the  dining-room.  It  may  be,  as  his  biographer 
ruefully  remarks  of  his  gusto  at  the  wedding  of 
Queen  Alexandra,  that  "  the  ti'appings  of  royal 
and  noble  life  appealed  to  his  sense  of  fitness." 
But  at  least  they  are  more  inspiring  than  the  bleak 
broad-cloth  of  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward  ;  and  as 
Disraeli  conceived  his  career  as  a  show,  it  is  grati- 
fying that  the  Beaconsfield  Trustees  have  found 
him  a  biographer  who  would  not  give  the  show 
away. 

Disraeli's  reputation,  as  the  American  said  of 
the  British  Empire,  is  "  a  queer,  queer  thing." 
It  is  not  easy  to  recover  the  first  rapture  with 
which  the  Victorians  received  the  miracle  of  a 
politician  who  could    both  write   and  speak,  or  to 


MR.    DISRAELI,     STATESMAN     157 

disinter  from  maiden  hearts  the  ineffable  romance 
of  a  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  who  wrote  fiction. 
To  the  modern  eye  those  ringlets  are  almost  lack- 
lustre; and  the  figure  that  fascinated  Queen  Victoria, 
as  it  posed  in  Oriental  attitudes  against  the  tartan 
wall-paper  of  Osborne,  has  lost  something  of  its 
power.  The  emerald  trousers  and  the  canary- 
coloured  waistcoat  which  drew  the  early  Forties  as 
with  a  magnet,  fail  somehow  in  their  grip  upon  an 
age  which  dresses  badly,  but  with  some  method  in 
its  badness  ;  and  there  is  little  romance  in  the  feel- 
ing for  aristocracy  which  Disraeli  shared  with  Miss 
Marie  Corelli.  The  East  is  full  of  mysteries  even 
after  Kismet  and  Mr.  Robert  Hichens.  But  it  is 
least  mysterious  when  its  waistcoat  is  full  of  watch- 
chains  ;  ex  oriente  nux  is  a  familiar  and  an  un- 
attractive emblem.  Yet  it  is  possible  in  the  cold 
dawn  of  the  present  century  to  forget  Disraeli's 
fantastic  parades  across  proud  and  peacock-haunted 
parterres,  and  to  estimate  his  true  value  and  business 
in  English  politics.  Although  it  is  a  figure  which 
appeals  irresistibly  to  the  undergraduate  imagina- 
tion with  its  suggestion  of  a  belated  D'Orsay  or  a 
premature  Randolph  Churchill,  it  is  a  career  with 
a  more  serious  value  for  politicians.  Disraeli  was 
to  some  extent  the  Treitschke  of  British  Imperial- 
ism, and  on  the  side  of  party  politics  he  produced  a 
strain  of  Toryism  which  approached  almost  to  the 
possession  of  ideas.  It  may  be  true  that  those  ideas 
were  either  Radical  or  wrong ;  but  it  was  a  unique 
achievement  to  have  brought  the  Country  party 
within  thinking  range  of  anything.  It  results  that 
Disraeli's  politics  have  become  the  favourite  study 
of  rising  young  men  ;  his  observations  arc  quoted. 


158   GENTLEMEN   ADVENTURERS 

with  or  without  acknowledgment,  in  the  common- 
rooais  of  our  great  universities  ;  and  his  name  was 
applauded  in  some  of  the  larger  music-halls  up  to 
within  a  few  months  of  the  war.  There  can  be 
little  doubt  that  the  gradual  publication  of  his 
official  biography  contributed  something  to  this 
revival,  and  it  is  for  modern  criticism  to  ascertain 
whether  it  is  a  revival  of  the  fittest. 

It  has  been  observed  that  statesmen  get  the 
biographers  that  they  deserve :  that  is  where 
posterity  hits  back.  There  is  something  delight- 
fully suitable  about  the  final  biography  of  Disraeli. 
Its  subject  spent  years  in  the  endeavour  to  convert 
himself  from  a  bizarre  and  romantic  Bedouin  into 
an  elderly  English  aristocrat  with  ideas,  and  he 
would  rejoice  in  the  solemn  and  uninspired  pages 
in  which  he  is  now  presented  to  posterity.  The 
biography  is  final,  painstaking,  and  complete  ;  and 
the  whole  thing  is  rather  like  The  Times  before  it 
became  autre  temps.  It  lacks  the  light  touch  of 
Disraelian  impertinence  ;  but  monuments  of  this 
class  are  apt  to  be  more  perennial  than  brass,  if 
less  amusing.  Disraeli's  career  is  made  to  appear 
not  so  much  startling  as  inevitable,  as  he  moves 
(like  one  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  perorations)  "  to  a  not 
far  distant  goal";  and  Mr.  Buckle,  from  his  praise 
of  his  predecessor  to  his  acknowledgments  to  Lord 
Rothschild  and  the  King,  commits  no  single  error 
of  taste  or  discretion  :  it  is  in  a  biographer  a  great 
omission. 

Disraeli  early  emerged  from  the  exotic  chrysalis 
witli  which  he  had  scandalized  Victorian  society, 
and  settled  sol)erly  into  English  politics.  So  early 
as  the  year  1852  he  was  painted  by  the  President 


MR.    DISRAELI,     STATESMAN     159 

of  the  Royal  Academy  in  a  complete  black  outfit ; 
he  was  even  wearing  a  black  tie.  His  judicious 
marriage  placed  him  beyond  the  need  of  money, 
and  he  moved  easily  up  and  down  the  pages  of 
Debrett ;  in  the  year  1846  he  sat  at  table  with 
four  lords  and  a  duke. 

It  was  in  the  days  after  the  repeal  of  the  Corn 
Laws,  when  Disraeli  had  tomahawked  Peel  out 
of  office,  that  he  began  to  loom  large  in  the  political 
world  of  loaves  and  fish-dinners  at  Greenwich  and 
to  acquire  a  serious  position  in  the  Tory  Party. 
The  leadership  of  the  Protectionists  was  in  that 
state  of  eclipse  which  has  become  its  tradition. 
Lord  George  Bentinck  was  an  extremely  worthy 
man ;  but  when  his  biographer  observes  that 
Disraeli  "  was  much  tried  by  the  behaviour  of  his 
leader,  who  discredited  himself  by  a  number  of 
petty  personal  charges  of  jobs  and  blunders  against 
Peel's  late  Government,"  and  adds  that  "  the 
charges  were  all  satisfactorily  repelled,"  one  marvels 
at  the  continuity  of  the  Tory  tradition.  In  the 
following  year  Disraeli  moved  forward  to  the 
Front  Bench,  and  transferred  his  membership 
from  Shrewsbury  to  High  Wycombe  ;  it  was  the 
beginning  of  his  advance.  When  the  question  of 
the  leadership  was  raised  on  Bentinck's  death,  the 
Country  party  was  faced  with  the  unfortunate 
necessity  of  choosing  a  spokesman  who  was  un- 
English,  but  intelligent.  Disraeli  had  made  a 
militant  demonstration  of  his  Hebraism  in  the 
publication  of  Tancred.  Like  many  Jews  who  have 
forsaken  their  religion,  he  was  doubly  emphatic 
as  to  his  race ;  and  his  description  of  the  Church 
as  "  a  sacred  corporation  for  the  promulgation  and 


IGO      G  P:  N  T  L  i:  M  E  N      ADVENTURERS 

maintenance  in  Europe  of  certain  Asian  principles  " 
must  have  petrified  the  bishops  as  surely  as  it 
would  convert  Mr.  Belloc  into  a  stream  of  molten 
lava.  In  the  result  he  cut  his  party  clear  of 
Protection  and  led  them  back  into  ofTicc,  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  Prince  Albert  felt  "  very 
uneasy "  as  to  the  laxity  of  his  political  con- 
science. 

He  approached  the  year  1848  with  a  veneration 
for  "  the  serene  intelligence  of  the  profound  Metter- 
nich  "  and  a  regard  for  Louis  Philippe  that  was 
almost  filial ;  and  it  is  hardly  surprising  that  a 
year  that  left  "  the  King  of  France  in  a  Surrey 
villa,  Metternich  in  a  Hanover  Square  Hotel,  and 
the  Prince  of  Prussia  at  Lady  Palmerston's  "  found 
him  slightly  shocked.  Disraeli  informed  the  House 
of  Commons  that  Louis  Philippe  had  succeeded  "  in 
riding  for  a  period  of  seventeen  years  the  Jacobin 
tiger,"  and  omitted  to  notice  that  on  his  return 
from  the  excursion  the  aged  monarch  had  exactly 
followed  the  precedent  of  the  young  lady  of  Riga. 
But  Disraeli  rarely  joked  about  royalty,  from 
these  earl}'^  days  until  he  made  his  astonished 
Queen  into  an  Oriental  potentate,  and  left  the 
stage  in  a  blaze  of  shooting  Stars  and  revolving 
Garters. 

Disraeli  was  generally  in  Opposition  in  the 
company  of  a  number  of  frivolous  old  gentlemen 
known  as  the  Tory  Party.  Opposition  came  as 
natural  to  Disraeli  as  Reform  Bills  to  Lord  John 
Russell ;  and  he  is,  perhaps,  the  only  man  since 
Charles  Fox  whose  intellect  has  survived  a  pro- 
tracted residence  on  the  left  of  the  Speaker  without 
deteriorating  into  what  we  have  learnt  euphemis- 


MR.    DISRAELI,     STATESMAN     161 

tically  to  describe  as  "  ginger."     His  Oppositions 
opposed,  but  they  were  rarely  ridieulous  and  some- 
times constructive.     In  the  year  1855  his  country 
was  at  war  with  Russia  for  some  reason  of  which 
the  secret  was  admirably  kept  by  the  Foreign  Office, 
and  the  people  of  England  called,   in  accordance 
with  their  practice  on  these  occasions,  for  a  Man. 
This    flattering    appellation    was    first    fixed    upon 
Lord   Derby ;    but    the    fourteenth    Earl   was   dis- 
inclined to  anticipate  his  descendant,  and  he  took 
no  steps,  apart  from  a  speech  which  Lord  Henry 
Lennox  described,   with   an  uncanny   prevision   of 
Mr.  Shaw,  as  "  the  old  roar  of  the  British  Lion." 
The   demand    for   a   dictator   was   finally   satisfied 
by  an  elderly  Irish  peer  with  a  remarkable  instinct 
for    the    requirements    of   the    average    man,    and 
Lord  Palmerston  went  into  office  on  the  shoulders 
of  "  majorities  collected  God  knows  how,   voting 
God  knows  why."     Disraeli,  with  a  clever  man's 
utter    failure    to    understand    unreason,    was    ex- 
tremely angry ;    he  pursued  his  country's  choice 
with  such  invective  as  "  an  old  painted  pantaloon," 
and   "  a   sort   of  Parliamentary   grandpapa,"   and 
even  attacked  his  principles  as  the  manoeuvres  of 
"  a  gay  old  Tory  of  the  older  school  disguising  him- 
self as   a   Liberal."     But   he   had  the   intelligence 
to   observe   that   "  a   war   Opposition   and   a   war 
Ministry   could    not   co-exist "  :    it   is    a   discovery 
which  Mr.  Pringlc  was  one  day  to  share  with  Mr. 
Billing. 

Meanwhile  the  Crimean  War,  which  was  siege 
warfare  in  truth  and  in  fact,  went  placidly  on  by 
the  waters  of  the  Black  Sea.  Italy  came  in,  in  her 
odd  way ;    and   Disraeli   startled    an   old   lady  by 

11 


102      G  E  N  T  I.  K  INI  E  N      A  D  V  E  N  T  U  R  E  R  S 

imparting  to  her  the  alarming  figures  of  national 
expenditure  : 

"  The  war  expenditure  of  France  is  one 
million  and  a  half  sterling  per  week — that  of 
England  one  million  and  a  quarter  !  This  is 
a  large  sum  for  distant  objects  and  somewhat 
equivocal  success." 

If  the  old  lady  would  call  round  again,  we  could  show 
her  the  same  article  in  a  more  expensive  style. 
The  queer  littleness  of  the  Crimea  is  well  illustrated 
by  another  letter,  in  which  Disraeli  almost  shrieks 
that : 

"  Lady  Londonderry  is  in  despair  about  her 
son.  Lord  Adolphus  Vane,  who  is  now  in  the 
trenches.  The  trenches  are  so  near  the  enemy 
that  we  lose  forty  jper  diem  by  casualties. 
Casualties^  she  says,  and  truly,  what  a  horrible 
word  to  describe  the  loss  of  limb  and  life  !  " 

"  They  order,  said  /,  tJiis  matter  better  in  France.'''' 

But  the  war  brought  its  compensations  for  an 
aspiring  member  of  the  Opposition  : 

"  We  had  the  honour  of  a  royal  invitation  to 
some  of  the  festivities,  and,  when  I  was  pre- 
sented. Napoleon  came  forward,  and  shook 
hands  with  me  cordially,  and  spoke  some 
gracious  words.  Our  Queen  was  on  his  right, 
the  Empress  next  to  her — Prince  Albert  on  the 
left  of  the  Emperor,  then  Duchess  of  Kent,  and 
Duchess  of  Cambridge  and  Princess  Mary.  So 
one  had  to  make  seven  reverences." 

It  really  makes  one  quite  giddy,  and  sounds  rather 
like  paying  one's  respects  to  a  steel  engraving. 


MR.    DISRAELI,    STATESMAN      1G3 

Two  years  later,  when  polite  society  was  in- 
trigued by  the  appearance  of  a  comet  and  the  usual 
announcement  of  the  approaching  end  of  the  age, 
the  native  troops  went  out  at  Mcerut,  and  the  Vic- 
torians were  confronted  by  the  inelegant  circum- 
stance of  the  Indian  IMutiny.  British  opinion  was 
unable  to  grasp  the  military  problem  of  its  sup- 
pression, but  the  atrocities  enjoyed  a  tremendous 
vogue.  Disraeli,  who  was  constitutionally  sceptical 
in  such  matters,  was  unable  to  share  the  gusto  with 
wliich  his  countrymen  peered  down  the  Well  of 
Cawnpore  : 

"  The  detail  of  all  these  stories  is  suspicious. 
Details  are  a  feature  of  the  Myth.  The 
accounts  arc  too  graphic — I  hate  the  word. 
Who  can  have  seen  these  things  ?  Who  heard 
them  ?  The  rows  of  ladies  standing  with  their 
babies  in  their  arms  to  be  massacred,  with  the 
elder  children  clutching  to  their  robes — who  that 
could  tell  these  things  could  have  escaped  ?  " 

This  is  not  such  stuff  as  Bryce  Reports  are  made  of. 
But  it  serves  neatly  to  indicate  the  temper  of  kindly 
tolerance  with  which  twenty  years  later  Disraeli 
bore  the  depopulation  of  Bulgaria  and  drove  the 
more  sensitive  intelligence  of  Mr.  Gladstone  into 
the  arms  of  the  Little  Father. 

He  developed  in  these  years  an  astonishing  pro- 
ject for  the  reform  of  the  Civil  Service.  Failing 
completely  to  recognize  that  the  salvation  of  Eng- 
land is  to  be  sought  in  the  exclusion  from  public 
employment  of  all  persons  resident  in  the  Borough 
of  Kensington,  he  contented  himself  with  reconsti- 
tuting the  Departments.     The  scheme  secured  the 


1G4      GENTLE  M  E  N      ADVENTURERS 

maximum  of  confusion  by  combining  the  War, 
Marine,  and  Ordnance  Departments  in  a  single 
ministry,  the  Post  Office  was  merged  in  the  Treasury, 
and  the  Prime  Minister  became  President  of  the 
Council,  Chancellor  of  the  Duchy  of  Lancaster,  and 
Lord  Privy  Seal.  There  was  also  to  be  a  Ministry 
of  Poor  Laws.  Lord  Stanley  informed  his  father 
that  "  there  is  no  great  harm  in  making  one  man, 
the  Minister  of  Poor  Laws,  a  rather  more  important 
personage  than  he  need  be  " ;  it  would  have  been 
a  graceful  prevision  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Webb  if  he  had 
made  it  a  lady  and  a  gentleman. 

Meanwhile  the  Sixties  continued  in  that  atmo- 
sphere of  commercial  prosperity  that  is  so  pro- 
foundly irritating  to  Continental  observers.  Prince 
Albert  died,  and  Disraeli  compared  him  to  Sir 
Philip  Sidney.  Count  Bismarck  emerged,  and 
Disraeli  compared  him  to  Cardinal  Alberoni.  Lord 
Derby  left  him  the  Premiership,  and  Disraeli  com- 
pared it  to  the  top  of  a  greasy  pole.  The  inva- 
sion of  Schleswig-Holstein  filled  him  with  ingenious 
arguments  for  non-intervention,  the  manipulation 
of  Luxemburg  inspired  him  with  a  fear  that  France 
and  Prussia  would  treat  the  Treaty  of  1839  in  the 
traditional  manner  : 

"  Our  people  might  let  it  be  known  at  Berlin 
and  Paris  that  the  violation  of  Belgian 
neutrality  should  not  pass  with  impunity." 

A  movement  of  Irish- Americans  (autres  temps,  autres 
hyphens)  provoked  a  remarkable  exposition  of 
Imperial  policy  : 

"  Leave  the  Canadians  to  defend  themselves ; 
recall    the    African    squadron ;     give    up   the 


MR.    DISRAELI,     STATESMAN     165 

settlements  on  the  west  coast  of  Africa ;  and 
we  shall  make  a  saving  which  will,  at  the 
same  time,  enable  us  to  build  ships  and  have 
a  good  Budget." 

It  is  a  queer  programme  for  the  putative  father  of 
Imperialism  ;  but  tlicrc  are  some  odd  corners  in 
the  edifice  of  that  singular  career  which  began  in 
the  rococo  and  ended  in  the  Flamboyant  Gothic. 
Disraeli's  taste  for  colonies  was  always  apt  to 
break  down  when  it  came  to  colonials,  and  his 
principles  amounted  to  little  beyond  an  aesthetic 
desire  to  retain  India  for  its  decorative  qualities. 
If  it  was  a  fault,  it  was  a  fault  of  the  imagination. 
But  perhaps  it  has  as  much  value  as  the  helter- 
skelter  Imperialism  of  Mr.  Hughes. 


MR.    DISRAELI,    NOVELIST 

WHEN  a  distressed  posterity  enquires  why  it 
must  look  to  a  man  who  wore  bottle-green 
trousers  and  far,  far  too  many  w^atch-chains,  for 
the  richest  picture  of  English  society  in  that  brilliant 
period  which  intervened  between  the  divorce  of 
Queen  Caroline  and  the  motherhood  of  Queen 
Victoria,  the  reply  must  be  that  after  all  it  takes 
something  of  an  outsider  to  be  really  romantic 
about  English  society.  For  it  is  only  from  the 
outside  that  any  great  institution,  whether  it  is  a 
Gothic  cathedral,  a  Government  Department,  or 
a  London  club,  can  be  really  impressive.  Nothing 
is  sacred  to  the  initiated.  No  valet,  as  it  has  been 
wisely  said,  is  a  hero  to  his  master.  Dukes  hold 
no  mysteries  for  duchesses,  and  baronets  seem 
scarcely  wicked  to  their  wives. 

That  is  why  there  has  always  been  something  a 
trifle  exotic,  if  the  language  of  the  hot-house  may 
be  applied  without  ineptitude  to  Mrs.  Humphry 
Ward,  about  the  literary  appreciators  of  the  great 
world.  It  is  by  a  similar  irony  that  the  nostalgia 
of  Sussex,  that  chosen  home-land  of  persons  who 
do  not  belong  there,  appears  to  have  affected  most 
strongly  among  their  contemporaries  Mr.  Kipling, 
who  is  Anglo-Indian,  and  Mr.  Belloc,  who  is  Anglo- 
Gallic.  But  one  need  not  have  week-ended  with 
the  Merlins  in  order  to  write  a  good  account  of 

IGG 


MR.     DISRAELI,     NOVELIST      107 

Broceliaundc.  Indeed  it  would  almost  seem  from 
the  record  of  English  social  fiction  as  though  it 
were  only  from  outside  the  charmed  circle  that  one 
can  get  a  really  good  view  of  the  incantations. 

Disraeli,  who  delighted  to  see  in  the  British 
country-house  an  Olympian  resting-place  of  semi- 
divine  personages  between  the  exercises  of  the 
Palaestra  and  the  subtleties  of  the  Senate  (one 
catches  the  flavour  !),  was  born  in  Theobald's  Road. 
Du  Mauricr,  who  is  for  ever  ushering  us  into  a 
drawing-room  that  culminates  in  the  tiara  of  a 
Duchess  at  the  end  of  a  long  avenue  of  athletic 
bishops  and  majestic  peeresses,  was  more  than  half 
a  Frenchman  and  lived  at  the  top  of  Heath  Street. 
And  Henry  James,  who  saAV  unutterable  depths  of 
significance  behind  the  stolid  mask  of  British 
society,  spent  half  a  life-time  in  the  endeavour  to 
forget  that  he  was  American-born.  So  scattered 
and  so  queer  are  the  origins  of  those  who  have  found 
in  May  fair  their  spiritual  home. 

But  romance  came  natural  to  a  young  man  who 
first  put  an  author's  pen  to  a  publisher's  paper  in 
the  year  1825.  George  IV,  ignorant  of  the  fatal  but 
posthumous  fascination  which  he  was  to  exercise  on 
Mr.  Max  Beerbohm,  was  king ;  and  Stephenson  was 
fumbling  laboriously  towards  a  type  of  locomotive 
which  should  resemble  a  trifle  less  acutely  that 
kettle  which  had  been  his  earliest  inspiration.  But 
Napoleon  was  only  four  years  dead,  Byron  had  two 
years  to  live,  and  it  was  the  authentic  age  of 
romance.  If  the  moon  shone  then,  you  may  be 
sure  that  it  shone  fitfully,  through  ragged  clouds, 
and  to  an  accompaniment  of  hooting  owls  upon  a 
world   populated    almost    exclusively   by   youtliful 


1G8   GENTLEMEN   ADVENTURERS 

knights  and  aged  abbots.  That  is  the  right,  the 
true  romance.  But  the  young  DisraeH  sought  it 
elsewhere.  Lytton  looked  for  it  always  among  the 
last  of  a  species — the  Last  of  the  Barons,  the  Last 
of  the  Romans,  the  Last  Days  of  Pompeii.  But 
Disraeli  characteristically  found  it  among  the  first 
families  in  England  and  the  highest  in  the  land. 
He  introduced  to  the  astonished  country  of  his 
adoption  the  high  romance  of  the  upper  classes. 

The  discovery  was  announced  in  a  publication 
which  he  subsequently  stigmatized  as  "  a  kind  of 
literary  lusus "  with  that  free  play  of  Latinity 
which  is  habitual  to  those  whose  facility  in  the 
dead  languages  has  not  been  arrested  by  a  classical 
education  ;  and  from  the  first  page  of  Vivian  Grey 
to  the  last  page  of  Endymion  he  continued  to  work 
that  richest  of  all  mines,  the  respect  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  for  his  betters. 

He  worked  it,  if  one  may  say  so,  with  panache. 
His  magnates  lived  in  greater  pomp,  his  peeresses 
moved  with  more  exuberant  circumstance  than 
those  of  any  rival  practitioner.  Who  can  forget 
that  perfect  scene  "  in  the  morning-room  of  Bren- 
tham  "  ?  The  Duchess  was  there,  of  course  ;  one 
forgets  the  title,  but  surely  it  is  enough  to  remember 
that  "  the  Duchess,  one  of  the  greatest  heiresses  of 
Britain,  singularly  beautiful  and  gifted  with  native 
grace,  had  married  in  her  teens  one  of  the  wealthiest 
and  most  powerful  of  our  nobles,  and  scarcely  older 
than  herself."     Is  that  enough  to  set  the  tone  ? 

".  .  .  in  the  morning-room  of  Brentham, 
where  the  mistress  of  the  mansion  sate  sur- 
rounded by  her  daughters,  all  occupied  with 


MR.     DISRAELI,     NOVELIST      IGO 


various  works.  One  knitted  a  purse,  another 
adorned  a  slipper,  a  third  emblazoned  a  page. 
Beautiful  forms  in  counsel  leant  over  frames 
glowing  with  embroidery,  while  two  fair  sisters, 
more  remote,  occasionally  burst  into  melody, 
as  they  tried  the  passages  of  a  new  air,  which 
had  been  communicated  to  them  in  the  manu- 
script of  some  devoted  friend." 

That,  as  an  inelegant  later  age  delights  to  say,  is 
indubitably  the  stuff,  the  whole  stuff,  and  nothing 
but  the  stuff  to  give  them  ;  and  the  man  who  wrote 
those  burning  words  was,  when  he  wrote  them,  an 
ex-Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer.  Could  Mr.  Bonar 
Law  do  as  much  ? 

"  It  was  a  rich,  warm  night  at  the  beginning 
of  August,  when  a  gentleman  enveloped  in  a 
cloak,  for  he  was  in  evening  dress,  emerged 
from  a  club  house  at  the  top  of  St.  James' 
Street  and  descended  that  celebrated  emi- 
nence." 

When  Mr.  Chamberlain  gives  us  the  novel  which 
we  have  so  long  looked  for,  one  wonders  wistfully 
whether  it  will  begin  quite  like  that. 

It  is  in  the  tone  of  these  passages  that  Disraeli 
pitched  the  whole  of  his  marvellous  tale.  His 
Earls  were  sometimes  Dukes  and  sometimes  Mar- 
quises;  and  once  or  twice  (for  the  English  dearly 
love  a  Laud)  they  were  high  ecclesiastics.  But  the 
scene  was  always  set  with  alabaster  and  plush 
curtains,  and  the  gas-jets  were  turned  high  to 
screaming  point,  as  the  flunkeys  lined  up  along  the 
walls  and  the  house-party  swept  past  on  its  way 


170   GENTLEMEN   ADVENTURERS 


down  to  dinner — two  Dukes,  a  Premier,  and  the 
INlingrclian  Ambassador — and  you  marvelled,  as 
they  went  by,  to  see  how  easily  Mr.  Disraeli 
mingled  with  this  exalted  company.  That  was  the 
fare  with  which  the  heated  social  imagination  of 
this  young  man  provided  his  countrymen,  and  it  is 
at  least  more  satisfying  than  the  half-hearted 
snobbery  of  his  later  competitors.  Mrs.  Humphry 
Ward's  Dukes  take  off  their  white  kid  gloves  to 
begin  dinner ;    Disraeli's  draw  them  on. 

The  social  picture  was  not  Disraeli's  sole  asset. 
There  was  his  wit,  his  wisdom,  his  incredible  verbal 
felicity  besides.  Fifty  years  before  Wilde's  young 
men  were  born,  he  was  making  all  their  dandy 
jokes  in  the  intervals  of  leading  the  Opposition, 
and  when  he  sat  down  for  a  little  recreation  after 
the  General  Election  of  1880,  that  old,  defeated, 
weary  man  with  the  fallen  cheeks  and  the  dyed 
forelock  sent  up  Endymion  in  three  volumes  of 
such  fireworks  as  had  not  been  seen  since  young 
Mr.  D'Israeli  first  came  upon  the  Town.  But  it 
is  from  his  demerits  that  Disraeli  derives  his 
principal  value  as  a  Victorian  antique.  Just  as 
the  collector  of  curios  fin  de  siecle  now  loves 
to  surround  himself  with  the  wrong  shapes,  the 
bad  colouring,  the  indcfensi]:)lc  taste  of  the  objects 
which  disgraced  his  grandmother's  drawing-room, 
so  there  is  for  the  collector  a  wild  splendour,  a  dis- 
torted magnificence,  an  unattractive  beauty  about 
Disraeli's  social  scene.  He  is  a  genuine  antique, 
and  as  such  he  has  a  value. 


MR.    DISRAELI,    JOURNALIST 

SHORTLY  before  Mr.  Disraeli  became  Young 
England's  Darling,  and  many  years  before  his 
interesting  discovery  of  the  British  Empire,  it 
was  his  fortune  to  contribute  to  the  Morning  Post 
and  Times  newspapers  a  number  of  political  articles. 
Many  men  have  done  worse.  He  made  Tory 
points  in  the  decade  following  the  Reform  Act, 
1832,  and  so  far  attracted  attention  that  "  Fitz- 
gerald says  they  drank  my  health  in  a  bumper  at 
Sir  H.  Hardinge's  on  Saturday,  and  said,  '  He  is  the 
man.'  "  That  was  nearly  eighty  years  ago,  and 
the  Primrose  League  was  still  half  a  century  away. 
The  articles  fulfilled  their  object  to  the  extent  of 
securing  for  Disraeli  the  aristocratic  patronage  of 
Lord  Lyndhurst,  and  the  heroic  journalist  was 
enabled  to  die  nightly  in  last  ditches  provided  for 
him  by  the  noble  lord. 

A  pious  industry  has  reverently  collected  these 
pieces  and  clothed  them  in  a  sober  habit  uniform 
with  the  volumes  of  the  Life.  Their  collection  is  a 
characteristically  modern  enterprise.  The  note  of 
the  times  (if  they  have  anything  so  subdued  as  a 
note)  is  collecting.  In  an  age  when  men  cultivate 
the  congregation  of  boot- jacks,  door-knockers,  and 
spittoons,  it  is  not  surprising  if  the  wilder  project 
of  collecting  newspaper  articles  finds  its  adherents. 
Journalism  is  of  its  essence  ephemeral,  but  so  arc 

171 


172   GENTLEMEN   ADVENTURERS 

snuff-boxes  ;  and  at  a  time  when  men  accumulate 
pistols  that  have  lost  their  locks  and  clocks  that  have 
lost  their  works,  it  is  hardly  surprising  if  some  bolder 
spirit  collects  jokes  that  have  lost  their  points. 
That,  apart  from  its  admitted  historical  value,  is 
the  somewhat  dismal  atmosphere  of  the  collection. 
It  has  the  stale  flavour  of  old  election  addresses. 
But  for  the  Disraelian  its  value  is  considerable.  The 
historical  utility  of  these  lost  leaders  for  the  clear 
presentation  of  the  discomfited  Toryism  of  1836  is 
respectable.  The  editor  has  made  his  "  finds,"  but 
he  exhibits  them  with  a  creditable  suppression  of 
the  manie  de  Vinedit.  He  is  never  a  showman  and 
almost  always  accurate  ;  and  the  industry,  with 
which  he  has  made  the  discovery  that  Disraeli  made 
the  same  joke  once  a  year  for  three  years,  deserves 
the  fullest  credit. 

To  say  truth,  Disraeli's  journalism  is  rather  por- 
tentous stuff.  The  solemn  personalities  of  his 
Open  Letters,  the  Ciceronian  march  of  his  antitheses, 
and  the  majestic  procession  of  a  style  which  referred 
to  O'Connell  as  "  the  vagabond  delegate  of  a  foreign 
priesthood  "  leave  one  with  a  feeling  of  amused  awe. 
But  embedded  in  the  bombast  of  it  all  there  are 
some  astonishingly  brilliant  phrases  :  one  feels  that 
if  only  Disraeli  would  not  talk  so  loud,  we  might 
hear  some  good  things.  The  recurring  description 
of  Melbourne's  leisured  conduct  in  office  ("  you 
might  saunter  away  the  remaining  years  of  your 
now  ludicrous  existence,  sipping  the  last  novel  of 
Paul  de  Kock,  while  lounging  over  a  sundial  "), 
the  picture  of  Palmerston  ("  the  Great  Apollo  of 
aspiring  understrappers,"  "  menacing  Russia  with  a 
perfumed  cane  "),  and  the  comparison  of  Wellington 


MR.    DISRAELI,    JOURNALIST    173 

to  "  the  aquiline  supremacy  of  the  Caesars  "  were 
worth  preserving.  But  his  John  Russell  is  never 
right,  and  the  letter  to  Brougham  is  an  unsatisfac- 
tory shy  at  the  widest  target  of  the  times.  A  more 
alarming  section  of  this  reliquary  is  filled  with 
Disraeli's  exercises  in  political  light  verse.  These 
were  ceremoniously  conducted  in  the  full  Popian 
dignity  of  the  heroic  couplet.  Wit  at  this  period 
was    attained    by    omitting    the    vowels.     "  From 

flippant   F — nb — que    down    to    priggish    R " 

is  the  sort  of  line  that  convulsed  our  fathers ; 
and  it  cannot  be  denied  that  this  method  of 
openly  concealed  personalities  gives  the  reader 
a  pleasant  sensation  of  being  in  the  know.     You 

feel  that  your  neighbour  is  puzzling  over  R , 

whilst  you  and  young  Mr.  Disraeli  and  the  right 
people  are  politely  appreciating  the  exclusive  jest. 
But  the  couplets  are  occasionally  pointed,  and 

"  Beneath  his  fostering  care  exchequers  thrive, 

Bright  sage,  who  proves  that  two  and  two  make  five," 

is  almost  a  flash  of  prophecy.  The  other  minor 
pieces  of  the  series  are  dialogues.  Disraeli  was  not 
a  master  of  the  dialogue  ;  there  is  a  John  Bull, 
who  says  "  Hem "  and  "  Fiddle-faddle,"  and  a 
self-conscious  conversation  between  Tomkins  and 
Jenkins.  Of  considerably  greater  interest  is  a  series 
of  articles  in  which  the  manner  of  Carlylc  is  deliber- 
ately parodied  :  "  Note  ever,  John,  the  difference 
between  a  true  nation-cry  and  a  sham  nation-cry. 
Reform  House  of  Commons,  wise  or  unwise,  true 
nation-cry  ;  Reform  House  of  Lords,  sham  nation- 
cry." 

The  staccato  Teutonism  is  not  unskilfully  caught, 


174   GENTLEMEN   ADVENTURERS 

and  a  later  passage  is  really  good  parody  :  "  Glory 
to  the  Masses  ;  choice,  generous  phrase  !  By  no 
means  inert  or  cloddish  ;  specially  complimentary. 
What  if  said  Papineau  orators  and  writers,  by  some 
mischance  of  a  lapsus  linguce  or  danmable  error  of 
the  press,  do  but  omit  the  initial  letter  of  that 
name,  wherewith  they  have  defined,  and  in  a 
manner  baptized,  their  countrymen  ? "  Disraeli 
joins  Swinburne  in  the  excellent  company  of  good 
parodists. 

An  interesting  feature  of  the  whole  collection 
is  the  astonishing  modernity  of  the  views  and 
phrases.  There  is  a  family  resemblance  between 
Die-hards,  whether  their  violent  decease  is  a  conse- 
quence of  Reform  or  the  Parliament  Act,  and  the 
contours  of  last  ditches  are  strikingly  similar, 
whatever  may  be  the  measure  which  they  obstruct. 
Disraeli  is  at  his  most  ironical  in  denunciation  of 
"  the  People  "  ;  like  all  representatives  of  a  minority, 
he  pours  all  his  scorn  on  those  who  claim  to  speak 
for  a  majority,  and  like  all  reactionaries,  he  confines 
his  constitutional  affections  to  enactments  of  an 
engaging  remoteness.  In  "  The  Vindication  of  the 
English  Constitution,"  which  is  the  most  sub- 
stantial piece  that  is  preserved,  Disraeli  dedicated  to 
Lord  Lyndhurst  a  hundred  pages  of  Tory  constitu- 
tional theory.  The  rhapsodies,  which  are  fortissimo 
about  the  Magna  Carta,  gradually  diminish  in 
volume  until  they  reach  the  faintest  acquiescence 
in  the  Whig  Reform  Act.  The  essay  concludes  with 
a  lyrical  demonstration  that  the  Constitution  of 
1835  is  a  "  complete  democracy,"  which  must 
have  read  strangely  to  the  author  of  the  Reform 
Act  of  18G7.     The  collection  contains  a  number  of 


MR.    DISRAELI,    JOURNALIST    175 

interesting  aphorisms,  a  stinmlating  and  irrital)le 
scries  of  lectures  to  ^Vhig  politicians,  and  a  working 
theory  of  Toryism.  It  also  enshrines  the  amazing 
statement  that  Louis  l^hilippe  resembled  \\'illiam 
III  in  his  character.  One  might  as  well  scandalize 
Mr.  Buckle  by  comparing  Disraeli  to  Simon  de 
Mont  fort. 


MR.    DELANE 

YEARS   ago,   when   a   gentleman's   collars   im- 
pinged   upon    his    cheeks    and    the    Great 
Victorians  were  still  in  the  nursery,  the  fivepenny 
Times  was  edited  by  John  Thadeus  Delane.     Whilst 
ingenious  persons  were  perfecting  the  Steam  Loco- 
motive and  inventing  the  Electric  Telegraph,  its 
opinions  were  the  admiration  of  his  countrymen, 
its  information  was  the  envy  of  Cabinet  Ministers, 
and  its   independence  was  the   despair  of  foreign 
Sovereigns  ;    it  was,  in  fact,  the  High  Old  Times. 
Before   the   repeal   of  the   newspaper   stamp   duty 
made    possible    what    was     elegantly    termed    "  a 
Brummagem  Press,"  young  gentlemen  in  sealskin 
waistcoats  scrutinized  its  sporting  intelligence  be- 
hind the  ample  paddle-boxes  of  the  steam-packet, 
and  old  gentlemen  in  plaid  rugs  and  travelling-caps 
read  it  anxiously  in  railway-trains  to  see  whether 
Mr.  Cobden  had  yet  succeeded  in  ruining  his  un- 
happy country.     Prince  Albert  called  it  a  "  wicked 
paper,"  Lord  Palmerston  burnt  it  with  the  utmost 
regularity,    and    President    Lincoln    expressed    the 
gratifying  opinion  that   it  had   more  power  than 
anything  in  the  world,  with  the  possible  exception 
of  the  Mississippi.     In  these  pleasing  circumstances 
the  editor,   in  spite  of  an  unimpressive  academic 
career  and  that  appearance  which  so  many  of  his 

176 


MR.      DELANE  177 

contemporaries  shared  with  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold, 
was  a  person  of  importance. 

It  is  one  of  the  few  consolations  of  statesmen 
that  editors,  who  distribute  immortality,  themselves 
rarely  attain  it.  The  name  of  the  Recording 
Angel  is  unknown  to  hagiologists,  and  his  obscurity 
is  commonly  shared  by  his  grosser  competitors. 
Delane,  who  conducted  the  Times  for  thirty-six 
years,  is  almost  the  sole  exception  of  his  generation. 
He  has  earned  an  honourable  interment  in  a  full- 
length  biography  that  any  Premier  might  envy, 
and  he  is  safe  in  his  niche,  with  Lassalle  and 
Admiral  Maxse,  in  the  novels  of  George  Meredith. 
His  reputation,  unlike  that  of  many  editors,  does 
not  rest  on  the  distinction  of  his  contributors, 
although  they  included  every  eminent  Victorian 
from  Thackeray  to  Robert  Lowe  ;  but  his  fame  is 
founded  upon  the  solid  achievement  of  The  Times 
newspaper  between  the  years  1841  and  1877.  It 
is  probable  that  his  reputation  originated  in  the 
exaggerated  respect  of  his  colleagues  for  his  social 
career.  A  journalist  who  dined  out  and  did  not 
wear  paper  collars  was  something  of  a  portent  in 
the  Sixties.  But  Delane  emerges  from  the  gradual 
publication  of  Victorian  letters  and  diaries  as  some- 
thing more  than  a  journalist  who  was  a  gentleman. 
He  was  the  ally  and  intimate  of  Lord  Aberdeen 
when  he  was  a  pacifist,  and  of  Lord  Palmerston 
when  (in  his  second  and  worse  manner)  he  was  a 
Jingo.  He  was  the  invariable  counsellor  of  Lords 
Granville  and  Clarendon,  and  a  source  of  constant 
irritation  to  the  Prince  Consort.  To  the  biographers 
of  Bright,  Gladstone,  and  Cobden  he  appears  as  a 
power  of  darkness,  and  Kinglakc  almost  made  him 

12 


178   GENTLEMEN   ADVENTURERS 


the  villain  of  his  dramatic  version  of  the  Crimea. 
Archbishop  Tait  was  not  far  wrong  when  he  observed 
that  Delane's  approaching  resignation  was  almost 
as  important  an  exit  as  the  departure  of  Mr.  Disraeli 
to  the  House  of  Lords. 

One  is  enabled  in  a  rapid  survey  of  thirty  years 
of  political  history  from  the  angle  of  Printing 
House  Square  to  hear  the  Minister  suggest  the 
policy  to  the  editor  (or  frequently  vice-versa),  to 
read  a  sufficient  extract  from  the  full-mouthed 
eloquence  in  which  it  was  announced  by  the  leader- 
writer,  and  to  see  the  comments  of  party  leaders 
upon  the  value  and  effect  of  the  departure.  Sir 
Edward  Cook  was  admirably  qualified  to  write 
of  Delane  and  his  Times ;  he  had  a  thorough 
knowledge  of  political  history,  journalism  held 
no  secrets  for  him,  and  his  own  experience 
in  the  mysterious  penetralia  of  the  Press  Bureau 
lent  a  peculiar  poignancy  to  his  treatment  of 
the  unbridled  war- correspondence  of  W.  H. 
Russell. 

Delane  had  reached  the  respectable  age  of  twenty- 
three  when  he  w^as  summoned  by  the  reigning 
Walter  to  edit  TJie  Times.  Queen  Victoria  had 
been  four  years  on  the  throne,  and  everybody  was 
engaged  in  building  railways  or  buying  railway 
shares ;  in  the  same  year  Punch  was  founded. 
His  predecessor  had  succeeded  by  his  fierce  indepen- 
dence and  interminable  sentences  in  making  the 
reputation  of  the  paper  ;  but  it  remained  for  Delane 
to  elevate  it  to  the  rank  of  a  public  institution.  His 
friendship  with  Lord  Clarendon  gave  him  a  valuable 
access  to  the  Foreign  Office,  and  acquaintance 
with    Charles    Greville    opened    to    The    Times   the 


MR.       D  E  L  A  N  E  179 

flood-gates  of  his  inexhaustible  gossip.  Four  years 
later  the  startling  publication  of  Sir  Robert  Peel's 
conversion  to  Free  Trade  marked  his  first  triumph 
as  a  journalist  and  earned  him  his  place  in  Diana 
of  the  Crossways  as  "  Mr.  Tonans  ...  in  his  den 
at  midnight." 

Sir  Edward  Cook  in  an  indignant  footnote 
defends  Mrs.  Norton's  reputation  for  discretion 
and  manages  to  shift  the  guilt  to  Lord  Aberdeen. 
It  is  improbable  that  he  provided  Delane  with  the 
definite  statement  which  appeared  in  The  Times, 
because  that  statement,  when  it  was  made,  was 
not  true.  But,  as  Lord  Curzon  has  remarked,  the 
business  of  journalists  is  the  intelligent  anticipa- 
tion of  future  events ;  and  Delane  was  a  master 
of  sensational  deduction,  as  he  showed  when  he 
founded  an  announcement  that  Lord  Northbrook 
had  been  appointed  Viceroy  of  Lidia  upon  his 
reported  inquiry  whether  a  hot  climate  would 
suit  a  delicate  girl. 

jHis  importance  in  politics  rests  upon  his  alliance 
with  Lord  Palmerston.  In  the  earlier  years,  when 
that  statesman  was  right,  his  international  Radi- 
calism was  sternly  opposed  by  The  Times ;  but  in 
the  decade  after  the  Crimea,  when  that  statesman 
was  indubitably  wrong,  his  Conservatism  at  home 
and  his  truculence  abroad  earned  Delane's  loyal 
support,  and  the  great  editor  was  seen,  to  the 
admiration  of  his  colleagues,  at  Lady  Palmerston's 
evening  parties.  Like  his  leader,  he  talked  non- 
sense about  President  Lincoln,  and  enquired 
whether  his  name  was  "  ultimately  to  be  classed 
in  the  catalogue  of  monsters,  wholesale  assassins 
and  butchers  of  their  kind  "  :    but  in  the  Crimea 


180   GENTLEMEN   ADVENTURERS 


The  Times  invented  war  correspondents  and  saved 
the  Army.  It  was  a  great  achievement,  that  was 
hardly  too  well  rewarded  when  Delane  rode  down 
Whitehall  with  a  duke  walking  on  each  side  of  his 
horse. 


M.    ADOLPHE    THIERS 

IT  is  perhaps  something  more  than  an  affectation 
of  Christmas  to  recognize  in  Adolphe  Thiers 
and  Camillo  Cavour  the  Brothers  Cheeryble  of 
Latin  statesmanship.  There  is  an  indefinable  touch 
of  Dickens  about  the  way  in  which  those  two  httle 
men  bob  up  into  history.  They  button  their 
tight  httle  frock-coats,  adjust  their  ill-fitting  Vic- 
torian spectacles,  and  proceed  with  invincible  bene- 
volence to  save  their  countries,  whilst  they  beam 
upon  their  astonished  countrymen.  One  is  always 
expecting  them  to  pay  off  a  cruel  mortgage,  wipe 
away  a  tear,  and  leave  the  embarrassed  hero  with 
his  blushing  bride.  Instead  they  made,  to  the  pro- 
found disgust  of  the  House  of  Hapsburg,  the 
Kingdom  of  Italy,  and  saved,  to  the  evident  sur- 
prise of  the  House  of  Hohenzollern,  the  Republic 
of  France. 

Of  the  two,  Thiers  probably  deserved  the  most 
(as  he  has  certainly  obtained  the  least)  reputation, 
by  reason  of  the  incredible  range  of  his  career. 
Cavour  did  his  work  in  a  single  period  between  the 
disappointment  of  1848  and  the  triumph  of  1861  ; 
but  the  achievement  of  Thiers,  which  was  the 
administration  of  France  between  1871  and  1873, 
was  the  work  of  the  ablest  INIinister  of  the  last 
Government  but  two,  and  the  leading  historian  of 
the  last  monarchy  but  three.     He  had  as   many 

181 


182   GENTLEMEN   ADVENTURERS 


careers  as  the  IMia^nix,  and  as  many  farewell  per- 
formances as  an  actor-manager.  In  the  year  1S41 
he  Avas  dismissed,  like  M.  Delcasse  in  1905,  a?  the 
price  of  Eui'opean  peace  ;  in  the  year  1851  he  was 
demonstrably  impossible  in  any  combination, 
whether  the  Second  Republic  survived  or  the 
Second  Empire  came  into  existence  ;  in  the  year 
18G1  he  was  an  academic  old  gentleman  who  kept 
a  salon  and  wrote  history  ;  but  in  the  year  1871 
he  was  President  of  the  Republic  and  deputy  for 
twenty-six  constituencies,  the  embodiment  of  law 
and  order,  and  the  rising  hope  of  the  chancelleries 
of  Europe.  The  Third  Republic  was  nursed  through 
its  fractious  and  unfascinating  infancy  by  a  Minister 
of  Louis-Philippe,  and  the  little  man,  who  had  been 
a  caller  on  Talleyrand,  lived  to  share  with  M.  Poin- 
care  the  anxious  responsibility  of  controlling  M. 
Clemenceau.  It  is  an  achievement  unrivalled  even 
by  the  dual  career  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  who  retired 
but  once  and  was  never  confronted  by  so  much 
as  a  single  change  of  dynasty. 

His  Notes  et  Souvenirs  from  1870  to  1873  form 
a  vivid  diary  of  his  peace  negotiations  and  Presi- 
dency. The  Grand  Tour  of  the  neutrals  began  in 
London,  where  he  saw  Lord  Granville  and  Mr. 
Gladstone.  He  congratulates  himself  that  "  The 
Times  itself  has  changed  its  tone  for  the  better," 
a  temporary  phase  which  was  probably  due  to  the 
leading  articles  of  Mr.  Leonard  Courtney.  But 
Thiers  did  not  know  that  Delanc  had  rebuked  this 
improper  pacifism,  and  in  any  case  British  neutrality 
in  the  Franco-Prussian  War  was  impenetrably 
passive.  He  had  the  intelligence  to  appreciate  the 
German   influence  of  the  Court,  although  he  was 


M .      A  D  O  L  P  H  E       THIERS  183 


solemnly  rebuked  by  Lord  Granville  as  "  a  Minister 
of  England  "  for  having  the  indelieacy  to  mention 
it.    Mr.  Gladstone,  who  was  unwilling  to  leave  his 
axe  at  the  foot  of  the   Irish   upas  tree,  was  un- 
moved by  the  suggestion  that  England  was  missing 
in  1870  the  opportunity  which  France  had  missed 
in  18GG ;    and  when    Thiers    emphasized    this    un- 
dignified   abdication    of   any    part    in    continental 
affairs,  the  Prime  Minister  "  preserved  a  grieved 
and    uncomfortable    silence."     From    London    the 
little  man  proceeded  to  Vienna,  where  the  Saxon 
Chancellor    gave    him    a    more    cordial    reception. 
Austria  had  been  buying  cavalry  horses  ;  and  it  was 
hoped   that   the    part    of   armed    mediator   would 
appeal    to    the    South    German    renegade    whom 
Bismarck  had  broken  in  1866.     But  unfortunately 
Beust,   who  impressed  Thiers .  with  having,   of  all 
the  men  he  had  known,  "  the  best  air  of  believing 
what  he  says,"  was  paralysed  by  uncertainty  as  to 
the  attitude  of  Russia.     In  order  to  resolve  his 
doubts,  the  indomitable  bagman  of  peace  proceeded 
to   St.   Petersburg.     The   account   of  his   Russian 
visit  is  perhaps  the  most  important  of  his  revela- 
tions, because  it  appears  to  antedate  by  five  years 
the  genesis  of  the  Franco-Russian  alliance.     It  is 
usual  to  trace  the  first  movements  in  this  direction 
during  or  just  before  the  war  scare  of  1875  ;    but 
there  was  apparently  a  conversation  between  Thiers 
and  Gortchakoff  in  the  autumn  of  1870,  in  which 
the  Chancellor  replied  to  an  offer  of  the  French 
alliance  : 

"  We  have  always  been  promised  this  alHance, 
General  Fleury  spoke  to  us  of  it  constantly, 


184   GENTLEMEN   ADVENTURERS 

and  wc  never  saw  it  come  to  pass  .  .  .  however, 
to-day  is  not  the  moment  to  eonclude  it.  Later 
we  will  take  measm^'es  for  uniting  France  with 
Russia  ;  for  the  moment,  let  us  consider  the 
question  of  how  to  save  her  from  the  evil 
case  in  which  she  finds  herself." 

A  few  days  later  the  Czar  himself  said  : 

"  I  should  most  gladly  obtain  such  an  alliance 
with  France,  an  alliance  for  peace,  not  for  war 
and  conquest." 

It  is  a  new  chapter  in  the  early  history  of  the  Dual 
Alliance. 

From  Russia  Thiers  proceeded  to  Italy  and 
embarked  at  Florence  on  a  singular  negotiation 
which  was  to  place  100,000  Italians  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  Lyons,  and  compel  the  Germans  by  this 
pressure  to  abandon  the  siege  of  Paris.  But  the 
indefatigable,  if  elderly,  dove  was  at  length  com- 
pelled to  return  to  the  Ark  without  either  an  olive- 
branch  or  an  Italian  army  corps  ;  and  France  was 
compelled  to  negotiate  the  terms  of  peace  with 
Bismarck  himself.  In  this  transaction  Thiers' 
principal  efforts  were  directed  to  the  promotion  of 
the  territoire  de  Belfort.  It  is  entertaining  in  these 
days  of  soaring  interest  to  remark  his  horror  of 
borrowing  at  the  "  usurious  rate  of  7J  per  cent.," 
and  the  observation  of  Bismarck  that  neutral 
States  "  did  not  exist  as  far  as  he  was  concerned  " 
is  typical  of  a  more  ingenuous  period  of  Prussian 
policy. 

There  are  few  things  finer  in  European  history 
than  the  exploit  of  this  little  Frenchman  who  set 


M .      A  D  O  L  P  H  E      THIERS  185 


out  at  the  age  of  seventy-three  to  find  peace  for 
his  country  in  a  tour  of  the  neutral  States.  It  is 
almost  as  though  England  were  to  be  saved  (al- 
though it  is  not  easy  to  imagine  from  what)  by 
Lord  Halsbury.  Thiers  bargained  with  Bismarck 
for  a  treaty,  swept  the  Commune  out  of  Paris, 
hustled  a  royalist  Assembly  into  a  republican 
constitution,  remade  the  French  army,  and  paid 
off  an  indemnity  which  had  shocked  every  financier 
in  Europe.  Si  monumentum  quoeris,  it  is  to  be 
found  in  the  Prussian  war  scare  of  1875  ;  France 
had  been  struck  down  in  1870,  and  the  alarm  of  her 
enemies  within  five  years  is  the  best  evidence  of 
her  recovery  and  the  noblest  tribute  to  the  work  of 
Thiers.     He  was  a  little  barrister  and  wrote  history. 


M.    LEON    GAMBETTA 

THE  attitude  of  British  opinion  to  foreign 
statesmanship  was  never  better  expressed 
than  in  a  conversation  viva  vocepoimli  overheard  by 
Mr.  Anstey  some  thirty  years  ago  in  the  neighbour- 
liood  of  the  Marble  Arch.  An  Irish  patriot  (patriot- 
ism was  ahvays  an  Irish  export)  was  enhvening  his 
hearers  with  a  disquisition  on  the  pecuhar  virtues 
of  imprisonment  (incarceration  was  ever  an  Irish 
pastime)  as  an  inspiration  and  a  stimulant : 

.  .  .  Some  of  the  best  and  greatest  men  that  ever  lived 

have  been  in  prison — ■ 
An  Auditor  {who  seems  to  have  reasons  of  his  own  for  finding 

this  argument  particularly  soothing).    'Ear,  'ear! 
The  Irish  Patriot.    Look  at  Gambetta  ! 
A  Dull  Man  {to  Neighbour).     WoVs  he  a-tellin'  of  us  to 

look  at  ? 
His  Neighbour.    Gambetter. 
The  Dull  Man.     Gam —  'oo? 
Neighbour  {curtly).    Better. 
The  Dull  Man.     Better  nor  wot? 

It  is  in  that  mood  of  incredulity  tempered  with 
mild  amusement  that  the  bearers  of  foreign  names 
arc  regarded  in  this  country.  It  may  be  a  legiti- 
mate revenge  for  the  imbecility  of  those  continental 
compositors  who  have  systematically  misprinted 
the  name  of  every  British  minister  since  Pitt.  But 
it  affords  a  somewhat  uncertain  basis  for  the 
formation  of  historical  estimates. 

186 


M  .       L  6  O  N      G  A  M  B  K  T  T  A        187 


When  one  is  confronted  with  the  biography  of 
a  French  minister  by  a  French  President,  one  feels 
proudly  that  this  sort  of  thing  could  never  have 
liappened  in  England.  The  contributions  of  British 
statesmen  to  our  rough  island  story  are  limited  to 
their  simple  lives,  their  downright  deeds,  their 
collected  speeches  on  political  topics  of  immense, 
but  happily  ephemeral  importance,  and  (in  rare 
cases  of  immense  culture)  of  their  Inaugural  Address 
to  the  British  Bee-Keepers'  Association  on  "  Bees 
in  Virgil."  It  is  the  peculiar  distinction  of  our 
statesmanship  that  it  is  wholly  illiterate.  When 
one  says  of  a  common  man  that  he  had  made  his 
mark,  one  refers  to  his  success  in  life  ;  but  when 
one  says  it  of  a  British  statesman,  one  may  be  taken 
to  allude  to  the  substitute  for  his  signature.  There 
have,  of  course,  been  exceptions,  trifling,  it  is  true, 
but  none  the  less  humiliating  to  those  of  us  who  care 
for  the  simple  traditions  of  our  public  life.  Lord 
Rosebery,  whose  name  might  otherwise  have  been 
honoured  equally  at  Epsom  and  in  Downing  Street, 
has  persistently  held  the  pen  with  a  skill  that  is 
positively  professional,  and  Mr.  Asquith  never  for- 
feited more  Liberal  confidence  than  on  the  day 
when  he  reprinted,  within  effable  frivolity,  an  essay 
on  De  Quincey.  It  is  an  action  which  would  be 
unthinkable  in  a  Geddes.  There  are  no  novels  by 
Dr.  Macnamara  ;  there  is  hardly  so  much  as  a  short 
story  by  Mr.  Bonar  Law.  The  scanty  leisure  of 
Mr.  Walter  Long,  the  brief  repose  of  Sir  Edward 
Carson,  the  sorely  interrupted  rest  of  Mr.  Shortt 
is  not  devoted  to  the  questionable  cultivation  of 
the  Muses,  those  alien  young  persons  of  certainly 
Greek,  and  probably  Constantinist  extraction.  Vis- 


188   GENTLEMEN   ADVENTURERS 

count  Grey  touched  the  utmost  permissible  Hmit 
of  our  concession  to  dilettantism  when  he  published 
a  work  on  Fly-fishing,  and  the  political  career  of 
My.  Winston  Churchill  was  seriously  endangered 
by  the  popular  belief  that  he  was  the  real  author 
of  the  works  of  his  American  namesake. 

It  is  the  British  tradition  that  a  politician  may 
decline  into  literature  in  the  same  manner  as  he 
sinks  into  the  Upper  House.  His  Works  must  not 
be  written  until  he  is  past  work,  and  when  he  has 
lost  his  memory,  he  is  at  liberty  to  write  his  memoirs. 
That  is  why  one  arches  an  insular  eyebrow  at  the 
information  that  M.  Dcschanel  accepted  in  the 
plenitude  of  his  powers  an  invitation  to  write  the 
life  of  a  deceased  statesman.  Ilis  country  was  in 
danger ;  he  was  actively  engaged  as  President  of 
the  Chamber ;  and  there  WTre  at  least  six  hundred 
men  in  English  public  life  who  could  have  informed 
him,  under  the  provocation  offered  by  his  strange 
proceeding,  that  there  was  a  war  on.  But  he  was 
undeterred  by  the  oddity  of  his  own  action,  and 
this  remarkable  foreigner  put  pen  to  paper  in  order 
that  in  those  weeks  of  victory,  in  which  the  march- 
ing columns  of  the  French  infantry  swung  down  the 
long  white  roads  into  the  little  towns  of  Lorraine 
and  Alsace,  his  countrymen  might  have  once  more 
the  vision  of  that  bearded,  one-eyed  man  who 
flung  an  arm  eastward  in  the  years  of  defeat 
to  point  his  haunting  cry,  "  Regardcz  la  trouee 
des  Vosges^  An  Englishman  who  evoked  such 
memories  of  the  past  would  have  been  relegated 
to  a  professorship.  M.  Dcschanel  was  elected 
President  of  the  Republic. 

Gambetta,  like  many  Frenchmen  of  distinction, 


:\I  .       L  K  O  N       G  A  M  B  E  T  T  A       189 


was  not  wholly  free  from  French  blood.  His 
mother  was  the  daughter  of  a  country  chemist  in 
the  Midi,  and  she  married,  a  few  weeks  after  the 
accession  of  Queen  Victoria,  an  interesting  foreigner 
who  had  come  to  Cahors  from  the  Genoese  Riviera 
in  the  grocery  business.  The  bridegroom  had  once 
shipped  as  cabin-boy  from  an  Italian  port  to  Chili 
in  a  clipper,  whose  passenger  list  included  a  man 
who  was  to  be  General  Garibaldi  and  a  priest  who 
was  to  be  Pope  Pius  IX  ;  but  the  experience  made 
neither  a  mariner  nor  a  rasta  of  him,  and  he  settled 
amiably  down  to  sell  to  the  citizens  of  Cahors  the 
unpleasing  pottery  of  his  native  land.  The  pros- 
pect of  a  long  life  opened  before  his  infant  son  when, 
at  the  age  of  four,  he  was  given  up  by  the  doctors  ; 
and  within  forty  years  that  half-Italian  boy  was 
the  voice  of  France. 

He  graduated  in  the  queer  school  from  which 
the  French  draw  their  parliamentarians.  After 
passing  through  a  Lycee,  in  which  his  preceptors 
fed  him  upon  the  windy  fruits  of  Athenian  eloquence, 
he  became  in  the  last  decade  of  the  Second  Empire 
a  French  national,  a  talker  in  cafes,  and  an  ornament 
of  the  Parisian  Bar.  It  was  a  strange  profession, 
in  which  the  art  of  voice-production  was  of  con- 
siderably more  importance  than  the  science  of 
jurisprudence,  and  a  student  in  search  of  the  best 
models  could  write  home  without  incongruity,  "  Je 
vais  au  theatre  et  au  Palais.''  The  atmosphere  was 
eminently  congenial  to  a  bull-necked  young  man 
from  the  Midi,  and  Gambctta  attracted  the  favour- 
able attention  of  his  colleagues  by  a  free  use  of 
imagery  drawn  from  the  Crucifixion  in  defence  of  a 
seditious  workman.     Success  in  this  class  of  case 


190   GENTLEMEN   ADVENTURERS 

went  naturally  hand  in  hand  with  the  beginnings  of 
a  pulitical  career,  and  the  one-eyed  avocat  with  the 
black  beard  began  to  rank  among  the  more  con- 
spicuous enemies  of  the  Empire.     His  diapason  was 
a  not  unwelcome  addition  to  the  chorus  of  hostility 
to  Napoleon  III,  in  which  the  peevish  vox  humana 
of  Jules  Favre  vied  with  the  shrill  ululations  of  Mr. 
Swinburne  and  the   deeper  chest  notes  of  Victor 
Hugo ;  until  in  18G8  a  brief  for  a  republican  journalist 
brought  him  defmitely  into  the  centre  of  the  stage. 
A  deputy  named  Baudin  had  got  himself  rather 
gratuitously  shot  during  the  coup  d'etat  of  1851. 
For  seventeen  years  his  interrupted  existence  was 
ignored  by  his  political  sympathizers.     But  in  the 
closing  years  of  the  Empire  the  researches  of  republi- 
can propagandists  brought  him  to  light  as  a  promis- 
ing excuse  for  the  exercise  of  the  French  genius  for 
political  interments.     It  was  unfortunately  found 
impracticable  to  bury  him  :    that  had  been  done 
already.     But   there   was   yet   time   for   a  funeral 
oration  or  so  ;    it  was  not  too  late  for  a  trifle  of 
monumental  masonry.     A  subscription  was  opened 
for  the  visible  commemoration  of  this  somewhat 
dim   figure   of  the   republican   mythology,    and   a 
brutal  executive  interrupted  this  agreeable  pastime 
by  prosecuting  one  of  the  journalists  who  opened 
the  list.     Gambetta  (with  him,  a  galaxy  of  repub- 
lican  talent)    appeared    for   the    defence.     Having 
none,    he    indulged    in    the    luxury    of   a    counter- 
attack.    It  was  developed  along  the  whole  front  of 
Imperial  policy,  and  by  the  engaging  procedure  of 
the  French  courts,  in  which  relevance  would  appear 
to  be  the  sole  ground  for  excluding  evidence,  he 
was  permitted  to  prosecute  the  prosecution.     The 


M  .       L  K  ON      G  A  M  15  E  T  T  A       191 

Court  was  bullied,  the  Crown  was  shouted  down, 
the  gallery  was  electrified  by  an  advocate  who  was 
Olynthiac,  Verrine  and  Philippic  by  turns.  At  the 
fall  of  the  curtain  (surely  one  can  hardly  imagine 
a  French  trial  terminated  by  anything  less  dramatic 
than  a  curtain)  the  applause  was  positively  operatic, 
and  within  seven  months  the  oracle  of  the  Cafe 
Procopc  was  deputy  for  Marseilles. 

Gambetta  had  now  achieved  notoriety,  and  it  was 
no  longer  necessary  for  him  to  conceal  his  intelli- 
gence. When  the  hot  weather  of  1870  sent  Bene- 
detti  to  Ems  and  the  Second  Empire  to  Sedan,  it 
might  have  been  expected  from  his  past  record 
that  his  contribution  to  the  national  effort  would 
be  confined  to  sonorous  republicanism.  But  it 
was  not.  Like  many  men  of  mixed  origin,  he  was 
intensely  patriotic  in  the  country  of  his  adoption. 
In  disagreement  with  seventeen  of  his  political 
associates  he  voted  the  war  credits  of  the  Empire, 
and  to  the  last  he  seemed  more  interested  in  the 
defeat  of  Prussia  than  in  the  eviction  of  the  Bona- 
partcs :  it  was,  for  a  republican  politician,  the 
supreme  sacrifice  of  an  unrivalled  opportunity. 
The  Empire  w^nt  down  in  the  sunshine  of  September, 
and  in  its  place  a  young  Republic  confronted  the 
elderly  ravishers  of  the  Prussian  General  Staff. 
Militarily  she  was  as  unprepared  before  von  Moltke 
and  von  Roon  as  Susanna  upon  a  similar  occasion 
before  her  elders.  But  the  soul  and  centre  of  her 
military  effort,  heartening  Paris,  ballooning  over  the 
German  lines,  galvanizing  the  peripatetic  Executive 
at  Tours,  was  a  man  of  thirty-two  with  one  eye 
whom  an  ambitious  Italian  parent  had  put  to  be 
a  fine  French  lawyer  ;    and  his  country  rewarded 


192   GENTLEMEN   ADVENTURERS 

him   ^vith   twelve    years    of    political    importance, 
crowned  by  a  dictatorship. 

By  a  pleasing  irony  M.  Deschancl  set  himself  to 
write  this  tale  of  French  defeat  during  the  years  of 
French  victory,  and  his  performance  is  as  interest- 
ing for  students  of  the  subject  as  it  is  for  that  greater 
number  who  are  students  of  the  author.  If  it  is 
within  the  power  of  the  President  of  the  Republic 
to  initiate  legislation,  it  would  not  be  surprising 
if  he  tabled  something  drastic  dealing  with  transla- 
tions from  the  French.  One  can  pardon  a  trans- 
lator unfamiliar  with  the  habits  of  French  classicists 
who  fails  to  recognize  the  Olynthiac  Orations  when 
they  are  disguised  as  "  Olynthiennes,^^  and  only  an 
Orientalist  would  complain  of  the  translation  of 
^H'cchec  de  Lang-Son^^  as  "  Lang-Son's  fiasco,"  when 
the  poor  thing  was  the  name  of  a  defeat  rather  than 
that  of  a  general.  But  it  is  hardly  possible  to  for- 
give a  travesty  of  M.  Deschanel's  emotional  climax. 
The  man  lay  dying,  and  a  woman  bent  over  him. 
"  Unefemme  le  haisa  au  front  et  disparut  dans  V ombre, 
d  jamais."  M.  Deschanel  has  the  genius  for  funeral 
oratory  of  all  French  statesmen,  but  his  translator 
is  sadly  puzzled  by  the  scene  :  "  a  woman,"  his 
victim  is  made  to  say  to  the  English  reader,  ''  a 
woman  kissed  him  on  the  forehead,  and  he  vanished 
into  the  darkness  for  ever."  The  italics,  as  they 
say,  are  ours,  the  sentiment  is  not  M.  Deschanel's, 
and  the  theology  is  the  translator's  alone. 

Gambetta  was  an  ideal  leader  for  a  beaten 
country.  His  proclamations  did  not  win  positions  ; 
and  even  the  advantage  that  she  had  lost  her 
War  Office  was  insufficient  to  bring  France  to 
victory.     But  by  his  ill-shod  moblois  and  his  im- 


M.       LEON      GAMBETTA       193 


promptu  strategy  he  contrived  throught  he  short, 
black  days  of  that  snowy  winter  of  1871  to  exorcise 
the  temper  of  defeat  from  a  defeated  nation.  Men 
have  earned  immortahty  for  less  than  that.  It 
was  the  tragedy  of  the  Peasants'  Revolt  that  it 
was  a  revolution  which  never  found  its  Danton, 
but  only  a  handful  of  Heberts.  It  is  the  bitterness 
of  the  German  defeat  that  it  has  not  yet  found  its 
Gambctta. 


13 


GENERAL    WALKER 

IT  is  always  delightful,  as  Pygmalion  discovered, 
to  meet  a  piece  of  art  that  has  come  to  life. 
An  omnibus  interior  after  Barry  Pain  or  a  War 
Cabinet  by  Gilbert  and  SulUvan  is  as  attractive 
as  the  Rossetti  goitre  or  the  Beardsley  lip.  But 
there  can  be  few  encounters  more  charming  than 
the  discovery  (in  a  most  interesting  work  by  a 
learned  man  who  professes  Economics  and  Socio- 
logy in  the  Louisiana  State  University)  of  a  perfect 
Conrad.  One  has,  as  one  meets  him,  a  lazy  sense 
of  fireflies  and  a  chaise  longue  in  the  tropics  ;  there 
is  an  air  of  wise  First  Mates  and  Borneo  cigars, 
and  the  comfortable  feehng  that  we  shall  be  told 
all  about  him  by  Captain  Marlow,  in  thirty-six 
hours  or  so.  It  will  be  a  story  of  sea-beaches  in 
a  hot  climate,  in  which  men  of  parts  will  muster 
incredible  resources  of  gravity  and  introspection 
in  order  to  do  buccaneering  things  of  the  utmost 
simplicity.  It  will,  in  fact,  have  more  than  a  little 
the  air  of  a  charade  performance  of  Treasure 
Island,  played  by  a  cast  of  distinguished  but  dis- 
satisfied philosophers.  That  is  why  I  said  that  the 
career  of  Mr.  Walker  as  a  pirate  was  a  perfect  Conrad. 
It  is  the  peculiar  distinction  of  William  Walker 
that  there  stands  in  the  chief  square  of  the  capital 
of  Costa  Rica,  whose  name  escapes  me,  an  elegant 
figure  of  a  young  lady  trampling  him   in  effigy. 

191 


GENERAL       WALKER       105 


To  few  men,  unless  indeed  they  chance  to  be  the 
personal  friends  of  sculptors  (a  limited  class)  docs 
such  an  honour  fall.  It  came  to  Walker  because 
he  followed,  with  the  full  energy  of  a  man  born  in 
Nashville,  Tennessee,  the  high  calling  of  a  filibuster. 
He  was  the  son  of  an  insurance  manager,  and  he 
became  almost  mechanically  a  pirate.  He  gradu- 
ated at  the  University  of  Nashville,  where  the 
curriculum  included  "  algebra,  geometry,  trigono- 
metry, descriptive  and  analytical  geometry,  conic 
sections,  calculus,  mensuration,  surveying,  naviga- 
tion, mechanics,  astronomy,  chemistry,  mineralogy, 
geology,  experimental  philosophy,  natural  history, 
Roman  and  Grecian  antiquities,  Greek  and  Latin 
classics,  rhetoric  and  belles-lettres,  history,  mental 
and  moral  philosophy,  logic,  political  economy, 
international  and  constitutional  law,  composition, 
criticism  and  oratory,  natural  theology.  Christian 
evidences,  and  the  Bible."  Any  student  of  the 
works  of  Mr.  Conrad  will  know  that  for  a  man  of 
such  accomplishments  there  was  no  opening  else- 
where than  under  the  black  flag. 

Walker's  floruit  as  a  filibuster  was  about  the  year 
1850.  There  is,  at  first  sight,  something  faintly 
disconcerting  in  the  occurrence  of  Filibuster  Brown 
as  a  national  character  at  a  time  when  most  people 
looked  like  daguerrotypcs  and  sounded  like  Emer- 
son. His  career  against  the  regular  background 
of  American  life  in  the  Fifties  has  the  effect  of  the 
tramp  of  smugglers  and  a  strong  smell  of  French 
brandy  in  a  cellar  under  one  of  Miss  Austen's  par- 
lours. One  seems  to  be  sitting  on  the  horsehair 
of  an  early  drawing-room  by  ^Ir.  Henry  James, 
whilst    odd    men    in    ear-rings    insist   on    counting 


196   GENTLEMEN   ADVENTURERS 

doubloons  (or  is  it  pistoles  ?)  in  the  next  room. 
That  is  the  charm,  although  it  was  not  felt  by  his 
contemporaries,  of  William  Walker.  His  beginnings 
were  as  docile  as  his  contemporary  background. 
Having  graduated  in  the  numerous  accomplish- 
ments of  the  University  of  Nashville,  he  studied 
medicine  and  became  an  M.D.  of  the  University 
of  Pennsylvania.  Then,  embodying  in  himself  the 
combined  educational  ideals  of  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells 
and  Mr.  A.  C.  Benson,  he  moved  on  to  the  easy 
slope  that  led  to  piracy  and  was  admitted  to  the 
Bar  in  New  Orleans.  Now  the  law  of  Louisiana  is 
known  to  be  founded  principally  upon  the  Code 
Napoleon  ;  and  the  sinister  career  of  William  Walker 
neatly  illustrates  the  disastrous  influence  of  codifica- 
tion on  the  character  of  one  who,  under  a  happier 
system  of  jurisprudence,  might  have  become  one  of 
our  most  respected  jurists. 

The  rake's  progress  through  the  professions  con- 
tinued ;  and  in  the  year  1848,  when  the  European 
market  for  revolutionaries  was  rising  sharply. 
Walker  sank  a  stage  lower  and  began  to  write  for 
the  Press.  He  even  edited  a  paper  called  The 
Crescent,  which  so  far  diverged  from  the  ideals  of  its 
title  as  to  wane  rather  than  to  wax  ;  and  he  prose- 
cuted a  remarkable  love  affair  with  a  young  lady 
who  was  congenitally  deaf.  It  has  been  frequently 
observed  that  love  is  blind,  but  its  deprivation  of 
the  other  senses  is  a  less  usual  phenomenon.  The 
idyll  of  William  Walker  should  be  told  with  the 
stern  pathos  of  Dr.  Scroggs's  narrative  : 

"  To  his  many  other  accomplishments  Walker 
now   added  the  sign  language  of  deaf  mutes 


GENERAL       WALKER       197 


and  proceeded  to  press  his  suit.  One  story- 
has  it  that  his  love  was  not  returned  ;  another, 
that  his  affection  was  reciprocated,  but  that  a 
misunderstanding  caused  an  estrangement ;  and 
still  another,  that  they  were  happy  in  their 
love  and  had  actually  fixed  the  date  for  the 
wedding.  It  matters  little  which  of  these 
statements  is  true,  for  the  outcome,  so  far  as 
Walker  was  concerned,  was  the  same.  The 
city  was  scourged  by  one  of  its  visitations  of 
yellow  fever,  and  Helen  INIartin  was  an  early 
victim." 

That  is  the  supreme,  the  Conrad  touch. 

One  is  now  at  the  brink  of  the  period  in  which 
Walker  filiburst  (if  that  is  the  appropriate  aorist). 
After  an  uneventful  residence  in  San  Francisco,  in 
which  he  failed  to  induce  the  authorities  to  do 
anything  more  stimulating  than  imprison  him  for 
contempt  of  court,  he  bought  an  astonishing  suit 
of  clothes  and  crossed  the  Mexican  frontier.  An 
American  traveller  who  met  him  at  Guaymas 
brought  back  an  indelible  impression  of  his  appear- 
ance : 

"  His  head  was  surmounted  by  a  huge  white 
fur  hat,  whose  long  knap  waved  with  the 
breeze,  which,  together  with  a  very  ill-made, 
short-waisted  blue  coat,  with  gilt  buttons, 
and  a  pair  of  grey,  shapeless  pantaloons, 
made  up  the  ensemble  of  as  unprepossessing- 
looking  a  person  as  one  would  meet  in  a 
day's  walk." 

Having    acquired    the    pirate's    make-up,    Walker 
cast  round  for  the  remainder  of  the  outfit.     He 


198   GENTLEMEN   ADVENTURERS 

returned  to  San  Francisco  and  placed  on  the  market 
a  number  of  bonds  of  the  Repubhc  of  Sonora,  which 
did  not  exist.  He  further  loaded  a  brig  with 
ammunition  and  camp  equipment ;  and  when  the 
authorities  seized  it,  he  recovered  the  vessel  in 
replevin  and  sued  the  military  for  trespass.  It  is 
not  for  nothing  that  members  of  the  Bar  take  to 
piracy.  Then,  with  the  impressive  rank  of  Colonel 
of  the  Independence  Regiment,  he  sailed  for  Sonora. 
As  a  beginning,  he  captured  the  Governor  of  La 
Paz  and  created  in  a  three-line  proclamation  the 
Republic  of  Lower  California,  which  was  at  once 
endowed  by  this  far-sighted  practitioner  with  the 
only  system  of  jurisprudence  with  which  he  was 
personally  familiar,  the  Civil  Code  and  the  Code  of 
Practice  of  the  State  of  Louisiana.  Narrow  critics 
have  believed  that  his  motive  was  a  desire  to  import 
the  Louisianian  institution  of  slavery.  But  it  must 
be  obvious  that  his  ruling  anxiety  was  strictly 
professional ;  he  was  determined  that,  on  his  eleva- 
tion to  the  South  Californian  bench,  he  should  be 
decently  familiar  with  the  law  which  he  would 
have  to  administer.  For  the  moment,  however, 
he  preferred  the  executive  to  the  judicature  ;  and  he 
became  President  of  the  new  republic,  whilst  the 
opSra  houffe  capture  of  another  Mexican  Governor 
was  effected,  and  American  sympathizers  opened 
a  recruiting-office  at  the  corner  of  Sacramento 
Street,  San  Francisco.  The  pleasant  climate  fav- 
ouring the  growth  of  tropical  republics,  he  pro- 
ceeded shortly  to  fulminate,  in  a  further  body  of 
proclamations,  the  Republic  of  Sonora.  Then  his 
supporters  failed  him  ;  and,  after  a  gentle  cavalry 
action  with  a  Mexican  patrol,   he  surrendered  to 


GENERAL      WALKER       199 

the  United  States  authorities  on  an  undertaking 
to  stand  trial  in  San  Francisco  for  violating  the 
neutrality  laws.  Filibustering  now  seems  to  have 
entered  on  a  period  of  litigation  that  must  have 
warmed  Walker's  professional  heart.  Captains, 
majors,  surgeons,  Mexican  consuls,  and  even 
Walker's  Secretary  of  State  passed  through  the 
dock  in  rapid  succession.  Meanwhile  the  ports 
of  the  Pacific  Slope  pullulated  with  war  material, 
and  the  oddest  people  sailed  for  Mexico  to  interrupt 
the  eternal  repose  of  the  Latin  races  with  the 
methodical  genius  for  efficiency  and  self-government 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon. 

Each  of  Walker's  ventures  was  conducted  on  the 
model  of  his  first  effort.  An  invitation  to  Nicara- 
gua was  followed  by  an  expedition  to  Granada. 
Here  Walker's  old  habits  reasserted  themselves  ; 
and,  instead  of  importing  his  own  Code,  this  time 
he  started  a  newspaper.  There  was  a  succession 
of  executions  and  a  war  with  Costa  Rica.  Then  in 
a  confused  way  Wall  Street  came  in.  The  reigning 
Vanderbilt,  who  was  hostile  to  the  filibuster  re- 
public, got  control  of  a  shipping  company  and  tried 
to  cut  Walker's  communications  with  the  United 
States  ;  and  the  course  of  events  became  almost 
invisible  behind  that  whirl  of  litigation  and  *'  bear 
raids  "  which  is  the  native  air  of  the  American 
financier.  Walker,  who  had  now  become  President 
of  Nicaragua,  endeavoured  to  accredit  a  Minister  to 
the  Court  of  St.  James's  ;  he  was  an  old  gentleman 
with  a  long  grey  beard  which  he  had  vowed  never 
to  shave  until  the  Spanish  evacuated  Cuba.  But 
in  spite  of  this  tonsorial  distinction  His  Excellency 
never  presented  his  credentials  in  Downing  Street. 


200  GENTLEMEN   ADVENTURERS 


Walker  was  next  threatened  by  a  triplice  of  Guate- 
mala, Honduras,  and  San  Salvador,  which  rang 
down  the  Wilhclmstrasse  and  echoed  across  the 
Ballplatz  and  resounded  along  the  Quai  d'Orsay. 
If  universal  unpopularity  was  the  test  of  universal 
empire,  his  Napoleonic  isolation  qualified  Walker 
for  a  pedestal  inscribed  Gulielmus  Perambulator, 
Imperator  Omnumi  Americarum.  Costa  Rica  (how 
one  remembers  the  reverberation  of  it  in  the 
Chancelleries  of  the  world)  came  in,  and  the  filibuster 
experiment  closed  after  an  exciting  campaign  over 
ground  which  is  principally  familiar  to  philatelists. 
A  second  venture  in  Nicaragua  and  a  descent  on 
Honduras  terminated  his  activity.  Like  the  other 
Man  of  Destiny,  he  surrendered  to  the  captain  of 
a  British  warship.  But  the  Icarus  (it  may  have 
been  due  to  some  flaw  in  the  mythology)  was  less 
hospitable  than  the  BeUerophon ;  and  Walker  was 
handed  over  to  the  ungrateful  people  of  Honduras. 
They  shot  him  without  hesitation  in  the  angle  of  a 
wall  outside  Truxillo  ;  and  a  gentleman  on  Harper's 
Weekly  compared  the  United  States  Government's 
discouragement  of  his  operations  to  the  attitude 
of  the  Church  of  England  towards  Knox,  White- 
field  and  Wesley.  You  will  have  noticed  the 
resemblance. 


SUPERMEN 

II.     PRIMITIVES 


KING   ALFRED 
KING   JOHN 
KING   HAL 
LADY   HAMILTON 
HERB   V.    TREIT8CHKE 
MR.    WILFRID   BLUNT 


KING    ALFRED 

THE  trouble  about  King  Alfred  has  always 
been  one's  complete  inability  to  distinguish 
him  from  King  Artliur  and  Prince  Albert.  It  may 
be  because  Count  Gleichen  once  made  a  statue  of 
him,  or  because  he  was  (to  say  the  least  of  it)  a  good 
man.  But  anyway  the  discreditable  fact  remains 
that  I  have  never  been  quite  sure  whether  he  married 
Guinevere  or  Queen  Victoria.  It  is  a  confusion 
that  historians  have  done  little  to  correct ;  because 
the  need  of  a  paragon  in  early  history,  which  drove 
the  Roman  poets  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Golden 
Age,  has  been  satisfied  in  the  case  of  Alfred  by  the 
creation  of  a  mythical  monarch  with  many  of  the 
gifts  of  Napoleon  and  most  of  the  qualities  of 
Abraham  Lincoln.  The  unfortunate  king  has  be- 
come oppressed  with  the  intolerable  burden  of  his 
virtues,  and  he  is  by  this  time  so  many-sided  as  to  be 
almost  completely  invisible  from  any  point  of  view. 
It  has  resulted  that  a  bewildered  posterity,  finding 
itself  debarred  from  any  appreciation  of  a  most 
interesting  military  and  political  career  during  the 
Danish  invasion  of  England,  has  clung  convulsively 
to  the  glorious  circumstance  that  King  Alfred 
defied  the  proverb  by  burning  his  cake  at  both 
ends  and  eating  it  too.  It  is  an  inadequate  record 
of  a  busy  life. 

If  Alfred  had  been  a  Frenchman,  he  would  have 


204  PRIMITIVES 

had  at  least  three  standard  and  classical  biographies ; 
and  if  he  had  been  a  German,  the  All-Highest  House 
would  have  founded  a  university  for  the  exclusive 
study  of  Its  illustrious  ancestor.  As  it  is,  the 
English  bibliography  of  the  first  great  king  of 
England  is  almost  as  large  as  that  of  a  minor 
Napoleonic  Marshal.  Anglo-Saxon  reticence  may 
sometimes  be  carried  too  far.  But  it  is  ungracious 
to  complain  that  the  business  of  writing  a  definitive 
text-book  upon  Alfred  has  been  so  long  delayed, 
when  the  result  is  so  completely  satisfactory.  His 
latest  biographer  follows  the  texts  closely ;  but  she 
is  not  so  acutely  afflicted  with  the  Anglo-Saxon 
attitude  as  most  Oxford  historians,  who  tend  to 
degenerate  on  the  slightest  provocation  into  Free- 
manesque  maunderings  about  Eorlings  and  Ceorl- 
ings.  It  is  true  that  in  a  moment  of  weakness 
she  refers  to  the  King  as  Engelondes  deorling, 
a  phrase  immortalized,  with  slightly  better  spelling, 
by  the  late  Poet  Laureate.  But  apart  from  an 
occasional  lapse  into  the  ridiculous  vernacular  of 
her  ancestors,  she  has  put  the  story  of  Alfred  into 
a  clear,  scholarly  and  accurate  volume.  The  only 
inadequate  thing  in  the  book  is  a  map,  which  serves 
to  reduce  the  reader  to  a  state  of  geographical 
ignorance  almost  equal  to  that  of  the  great  Saxon 
strategist  himself. 

The  true  history  of  Alfred,  Ethelwulf's  son,  is 
the  record  of  a  painstaking,  Teutonic  fighting  man, 
who  was  incidentally  the  father  of  his  country. 
Alfred  was  not  an  inspired  soldier  ;  but  he  possessed 
the  supreme  military  virtue  of  willingness  to  be 
taught  by  the  enemy.  He  was  hardly  the  founder 
of  the  British  navy  ;  although  he  has  become  the 


KING       ALFRED  205 

eponymous  saint  of  the  Blue  Water  Sehool  on  the 
strength  of  a  number  of  vessels  of  pceuliar  design, 
and  a  fortunate  gale  which  arrived  before  the  king 
had  completed  his  building  programme,  and  sent, 
according  to  the  Chronicle,  one  hundred  and  forty- 
enemy  ships  "  to  the  devils."  And,  above  all,  he 
was  not  the  indifferent  pastry-cook  of  popular 
myth  or  the  queer  mystical  figure  of  the  inter- 
polations to  Asser,  with  his  mysterious  prayers  and 
diseases  and  a  general  flavour  of  the  late  Middle 
Ages  or  the  early  Nineties.  But  he  was  just  a 
careful  man  of  moderate  ability,  wdth  a  strong 
interest  in  the  welfare  of  his  subjects  and  a  mild 
taste  for  science  and  literature.  King  Alfred  was 
really  rather  like  Prince  Albert  after  all. 

Of  his  youth  and  education  there  is  little  to  say. 
Some  may  regret  that  history  does  not  permit 
him  to  display  the  indecent  precocity  of  the  copy- 
book, but  rather  the  juvenile  imbecility  of  true 
greatness.  But  the  deficiencies  of  his  early  train- 
ing enabled  him  to  display  in  later  years  a  quiet 
determination  to  acquire  the  learning  that  he  had 
missed  in  boyhood,  which  almost  equals  Cato's 
intellectual  heroism  when  he  learned  Greek  grey- 
bearded.  His  importance  to  England  begins  in 
the  year  868  with  his  appointment  as  Secundarius 
to  his  brother  the  king.  Three  years  later  in  the 
Annee  Terrible  of  the  Saxon  kingdom  Alfred's 
trial  opened.  Reading  was  seized  by  the  Danes ; 
and  the  failure  of  a  Saxon  attack  upon  their  en- 
trenchments illustrated  the  value  of  prepared  posi- 
tions and  taught  Alfred  the  first  of  his  lessons  in 
Danish  methods  of  warfare.  That  singular  people 
was  in  the  habit  of  approaching  a  country  in  its 


20G  PRIMITIVES 

ships,  digging  itself  in,  and  making  great  cavalry 
raids  on  stolen  horses  from  the  shelter  of  its  en- 
trenched camp.  It  would  appear  that  the  Vikings 
were  the  original  Horse  Marines.  The  lessons  of 
the  Danish  wars,  like  those  of  the  American  Civil 
War,  were  "  spades  and  mounted  infantry."  Alfred 
learned  them,  and  retired  to  Athelney  to  organize 
the  national  resistance. 

TOien  he  emerged  from  his  retreat,  "  and  his 
people  was  fain  of  him,"  he  swept  the  Northmen 
back  into  the  north-east  in  the  campaign  of  Ethan- 
dun.  As  the  king  moved  out  of  Athelney  on 
Brixton  Deverill,  the  levies  of  Somerset,  Wiltshire, 
and  part  of  Hampshire  moved  up  like  the  concen- 
trating units  of  a  modern  army.  On  the  very  next 
day  he  moved  his  forces  with  Prussian  rapidity 
upon  Leigh,  and  then  to  the  battlefield  of  Ethan- 
dun.  The  Danes  collapsed  before  his  complete 
and  punctual  concentration.  This  was  something 
more  than  a  laborious  imitation  of  Danish  mobility  ; 
it  was  a  brilliant  employment  of  punctuality  and 
organization,  factors  that  had  been  forgotten  in 
European  warfare  since  the  hollow  square  of  the 
Roman  Empire  went  down  before  the  Dervish 
rush  of  the  Barbarians. 

Alfred  employed  his  years  of  peace  in  careful 
organization.  The  army  was  organized  in  two 
relays,  like  Nehemiah's  wall-builders  ;  the  creation 
of  Burhs  applied  a  system  of  barbed  wire  and 
blockhouses  to  the  restriction  of  the  movements 
of  a  mobile  enemy ;  and  an  increase  in  the  number 
of  Thanes  substituted  a  professional  soldiery  for 
the  heroic  but  incompetent  amateurs  of  the  earlier 
Saxon    wars.     After    a    second    interval    of    war, 


KING       ALFRED  207 

Alfred  proceeded  with  the  organization  of  peace  ; 
Wessex  was  systematically  divided  into  shires,  and 
a  collection  of  laws  embodied  all  that  was  respect- 
able in  the  earlier  codes.  The  king  himself  ex- 
hibited an  intense  interest  in  the  science  of  geo- 
graphy and  a  straightforward  desire  to  supply  his 
country  by  education  with  "  men  of  prayer,  men 
of  war,  and  men  of  work."  His  literary  career,  for 
which  his  biographers  appear  to  feel  a  somewhat 
exaggerated  respect,  consists  for  the  most  part 
of  a  blameless  course  of  translations  of  improving 
w^orks.  Alfred  had  lived  with  a  purpose,  and  fought 
with  a  purpose  ;  and  it  was  perhaps  inevitable  that 
he  should  write  with  a  purpose. 


KING    JOHN 

SEVEN  hundred  years  ago,  on  a  hot  morning 
in  the  Thames  valley,  King  John  set  seal  to 
a  Latin  document  of  sixty  clauses.  It  is  a  scene 
which  has  impressed  imaginations  as  far  apart  as 
the  Earl  of  Halsbury  and  the  late  Madame  Tussaud ; 
and  the  occasion  possesses  an  interest  beyond  the 
theatrical  value  inherent  in  any  meeting  of  persons 
in  full  armour  so  near  to  Waterloo  Station.  The 
banality  of  most  anniversaries  finds  appropriate 
expression  in  the  vulgarity  of  most  monuments. 
But  Magna  Carta  is  perhaps  entitled  to  more  respect- 
ful treatment.  The  document  itself,  although  it 
has  been  belittled  by  the  sinister  combination  of  a 
Frenchman,  a  Scotchman,  and  a  learned  lady,  is  at 
least  as  important  as  any  other  that  is  honoured 
with  an  anniversary.  If  President  Wilson  is  en- 
titled to  indicate  by  fireworks  his  satisfaction  at  the 
exclusion  from  the  Eastern  States  of  the  authority 
of  George  III,  there  seems  no  reason  why  the  Church 
of  England  should  not  celebrate  by  bonfires,  if  it 
feels  inclined,  its  liberty  to  elect  Bishops  without 
the  interference  of  King  John. 

The  anniversary  of  Magna  Carta  shares  with  all 
other  events  before  the  Eighteenth  Century  the 
peculiar  charm  that  we  celebrate  it,  by  reason  of 
a  change  in  the  calendar,  on  the  wrong  day.  In 
any  case  it   should   be   remembered   that   we  are 

208 


KING       JOHN  209 

not  asked  to  make  it  an  annual  celebration,  but 
only  a  centenary.  And  centenaries  come  but  once 
a  century. 

Perhaps  the  foremost  interest  of  the  anniversary 
does  not  lie  in  the  event  itself,  but  in  the  chain  of 
centenary  years  which  lie  between  any  modern  June 
and  the  June  when  the  Great  Charter  was  signed.  In 
1315  no  one  had  heard  of  it ;  and  in  1415  men  were 
more  interested  in  the  precarious  situation  of  an 
Expeditionary  Force  in  France,  commanded  by 
Henry  V,  which  four  months  later  cut  its  way 
through  to  the  victory  of  Agincourt.  In  1515 
supercilious  devotees  of  the  New  Learning  regarded 
King  John's  barons  as  savages  ;  but  in  1615  those 
London  lawyers,  who  were  later  to  make  the 
English  Revolution,  respected  in  an  age  of  absolute 
monarchy  the  charter  of  personal  liberty.  In  1715 
England  was  still  debating  the  question  whether 
the  Treaties  of  Utrecht  were  an  honourable  pea^e 
and  wishing  that  King  George  I  would  learn  just  a 
little  English  ;  and  in  1815  King  John  was  eclipsed 
by  the  news  that  the  English  army  was  in  Flanders 
and  Napoleon  was  on  the  Sambre. 

There  is  perhaps  a  malicious  appropriateness  that 
in  1915,  when  the  centenary  of  Waterloo  could  only 
be  celebrated  on  the  spot  by  the  Prussians,  the 
anniversary  of  Magna  Carta  should  have  come 
round  under  the  genial  provisions  of  the  Defence 
of  the  Realm  Act.  If  any  of  our  Major-Generals 
had  heard  of  Stephen  Langton,  there  can  be  little 
doubt  that  Runnymede  would  have  been  a  pro- 
hibited area. 

The  proceedings  of  that  June  day,  in  "  the 
meadow    which    is    called    Runingmcdc    between 

14 


210  PRIMITIVES 

Windelesore  and  Stanes,"  were  in  themselves  a 
profoundly  unimportant  negotiation  which  appeared 
to  terminate  a  singularly  unimpressive  rebellion. 
The  noblemen  of  England  had  expressed  their 
objection  to  compulsory  military  service  in  the 
French  war  by  appearing  in  arms  against  the  King. 
He  was  an  unpleasant  man  and  a  good  sportsman, 
who  died  four  years  later  of  an  inability  to  assimilate 
peaches  and  new  cider  in  the  atmosphere  of  Newark. 
He  had  shown  a  certain  resource  in  condemning  an 
archdeacon  to  death  by  the  pressure  of  an  enormous 
leaden  mitre  ;  and  his  receipt  of  the  news  of  the 
death  of  his  First  Minister  with  the  observation, 
"  Tell  him  to  go  to  hell,"  exhibited  a  gift  of  limited 
but  powerful  repartee.  On  the  present  occasion 
he  had  travelled  from  Wiltshire  by  way  of 
Oxford  to  interview  the  "  Army  of  God  and  Holy 
Church."  Since  he  noticed  that  it  considerably 
out-numbered  his  own  forces,  he  signed  Magna 
Carta. 

By  reason  either  of  the  unique  circumstance  that 
the  party  of  reform  was  led  by  the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  or  of  the  simple  fact  that  English 
politicians  are  unfamiliar  with  the  Latin  language, 
the  edict  of  King  John  has  become  the  charter  of 
English  liberties.  It  is  a  splendid  legacy,  which 
would  surprise  no  one  more  than  the  testator. 
English  jurists  have  chosen  to  see  in  the  thirty- 
ninth  article  of  Magna  Carta  the  right  of  all  English, 
men  to  trial  by  twelve  of  their  countrymen  : 

"  Nullus  liber  homo  cajnatur  vel  imprisonetur 
.  .  .  nisi  ijer  legale  judicium  parium  suorum 
vel  per  legem  terrae."" 


KING      JOHN  211 

The  Latin  is  sufficiently  British  to  enshrine  the 
Anglo-Saxon  right  of  trial  by  jury  ;  but  whether 
King  John  contemplated  this  wide  interpretation 
is  a  question  that  only  his  late  majesty  can  answer. 
His  surprise  at  his  elevation  to  the  ranks  of  the 
Fathers  of  the  Constitution  must  be  almost  greater 
than  that  of  his  new  neighbours.  That,  at  any 
rate,  is  the  clause  which  the  King  accepted  at  the 
suggestion  of  two  Archbishops,  seven  Bishops,  a 
Papal  Legate,  and  sixteen  Barons  ;  and  it  is  upon 
that  democratic  barricade  that  Lords  Halsbury  and 
Parmoor  were  prepared  to  fall  in  the  cause  of  per- 
sonal liberty  and  the  name  of  Stephen  Langton. 

|By  the  consent  of  eighteen  generations  of  Eng- 
lishmen, Magna  Carta  is  one  of  the  central  docu- 
ments of  English  history.  But  whereas  the  Grand 
Remonstrance  was  drafted  by  men  who  intended 
to  remonstrate,  and  the  Bill  of  Rights  was  a  con- 
scious attempt  to  pass  the  right  into  law,  the  chief 
contribution  of  Magna  Carta  to  English  law  was 
the  unintentional  aberration  of  an  absent-minded 
king.  Magna  Carta  was  an  unpremeditated  achieve- 
ment, comparable  to  Simon  de  Montfort's,  who 
looked  once  for  a  party-meeting  and  discovered  the 
Parliament  of  the  Three  Estates,  or  to  the  somnam- 
bulist statesmanship  of  those  men  of  the  Eighteenth 
Century  who  went  out  in  search  of  an  export  trade 
and  found  an  Empire. 


KING    HAL 

THEY   say  that   in   the  Fifteenth  Century  the 
jNIiddle    Age    went   mad   and   mocked   itself 
before  it  died.     The  grey  austerity  of  the  Gothic, 
in  which  six  generations  of  men  had  glorified  God 
by  the  chill,  slim  magnificence  of  their  tall  cathe- 
drals, writhed  into  the  rococo  convolutions  of  the 
Flamboyant  manner,  until  it  blossomed  into  that 
strange  flower  of  mediaeval  decadence,  the  Sainte 
Chapelle.     Manners  took  on  that  air  of  conscious 
archaism  which  always  marks  the  end  of  an  age. 
Priests    became    more    priestly,    maidens    faltered 
more  maidenly,  and  knights  bore  themselves  more 
knightly  than  they  had  ever  been  seen  in  the  real 
world   of   priests,  knights  and  maidens  ;    and   the 
whole  generation  clung  to  the  ways  of  its  fathers 
with  the  desperation  of  men  who  see  clearly  that 
their  sons  will  take   a  different  road.     It  is   not 
surprising  that  there  was  born  into  this  w^orld  of 
deliberate  medisevalism  and  self-conscious  chivalry 
a  king  whose  whole  career  typified  to  the  point  of 
travesty  the  royal  life  of  the  Middle  Ages.     Henry 
V,  in  whom  a  hasty  posterity  has  been  sometimes 
overapt  to  see  a  handy  summary  of  the  mediaeval 
monarchs,  was  in  reality  an  ingenious  reconstruction 
of  his  predecessors   in  the  heroic   age.     But  then 
posterity,  poor  dear,   is  so  American  :      she  loves 
epitomes,   and  the  temptation  to  take  Henry  II, 

212 


K  I  N  G      H  A  L  213 

Edward  III,  Philip  Augustus  and  several  Dukes  of 
Burgundy  all  in  one  by  getting  up  King  Henry  V 
has  proved  too  strong  for  her.  He  is,  to  say  truth, 
a  somewhat  dubious  antique.  One  feels  all  the 
time  that  he  has  been  subjected  to  a  drastic 
process  of  restoration.  The  colours  have  been 
heightened  and  the  wormholcs  have  been  deepened. 
His  chivalry  was  so  much  more  chivalrous,  his 
Round  Table  so  infinitely  rounder,  and  his  castles 
so  far  more  castellated  than  the  real  thing,  that  one 
may  walk  admiringly  round  him  as  though  he  were 
a  mediaeval  masterpiece  of  that  art  of  architectural 
reconstruction  with  which  the  ingenious  M.  Viollet- 
le-Duc  delighted  the  contemporaries  of  Napoleon 

in. 

This  king,  if  one  may  adopt  the  language  of  the 
sale-room,  was  Sheraton  at  best ;  and  his  misfor- 
tune is  that  he  is  generally  sold  as  Chippendale. 
But  his  career,  if  one  is  free  from  these  antiquarian 
scruples,  forms  an  excellent  subject  for  biography. 
After  all,  he  lived  a  long  time  ago.  1415  was  not 
the  day  before  yesterday,  even  if  it  was  not  at  the 
heart  of  the  Middle  Ages.  Knights  were  very 
sufficiently  bold  then,  in  spite  of  the  disturbing 
element  introduced  into  the  gentlemanly  pastime  of 
war  by  the  grimy  innovation  of  artillery  ;  and  one 
may  make  his  career  the  foundation  of  an  interesting 
piece  of  mediaeval  history.  One  begins  with  a  fine 
confused  picture  of  England  when  Henry  IV  was 
engaged  in  making  it,  and  his  aristocracy  was  (like 
Penelope)  unmaking  it  when  his  back  was  turned 
One  passes  to  the  Shakespearian  controversy  as 
to  the  reality  or  otherwise  of  Prince  Henry's  wild 
oats  :    this  is  where  one  gets  one's  possibilities  of 


214  PRIMITIVES 

comic  relief,  whilst  mild-eyed  historians  titter  like 
maiden  aunts  over  the  naughtiness  of  princes. 
When  one  gets  Henry  on  the  throne,  the  narrative 
takes  on  a  broader  sweep  and  becomes  co-extensive 
with  the  course  of  Anglo-French  history  between 
1413  and  1422. 

Prince  Hal  (one  falls  inevitably  into  the  dialect) 
had  a  birthplace  which  was  one  of  those  periodical 
concessions  which  the  British  monarchy  makes  to 
Welsh  susceptibilities.  He  was  born  at  Mon- 
mouth on  the  Welsh  border  in  one  of  the  fortresses 
which  had  been  erected  by  English  civilization 
to  dam  back  the  eastward-setting  tide  of  Celtic 
barbarism ;  and  it  does  infinite  credit  to  the  rapacity 
of  Welsh  tradition  that  he  has  been  greeted,  in 
these  circumstances,  as  a  Welsh  hero.  Early,  per- 
haps too  early,  he  went  to  Oxford  ;  since  the  age  of 
eleven  seems  unduly  tender  for  an  undergraduate, 
even  after  one  has  made  allowance  for  the  morbid 
precocity  invariably  displayed  by  heirs  to  the 
British  throne.  But  as  his  residence  was  limited  to 
a  period  of  six  months,  the  Oxford  influence  on  his 
formation  was  of  the  slightest,  and  time  was  even 
wanting  for  the  resident  preocptors  to  proclaim 
those  indications  of  exceptional  ability  which  they 
have  never  failed  to  detect  in  the  sons  of  the  very 
great.  The  remainder  of  his  education  (it  was 
conducted  in  a  Bishop's  house,  and  the  school- 
bills  included  eightpennyworth  of  harp-strings,  a 
fourpenny  work  on  grammar,  and  a  new  scabbard) 
would  appear  to  have  been  confined  to  instruction 
in  the  local  colour  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

His  real  training  began  when  his  father  sent  him 
to    govern    the    CroAvn    Colony   of    Wales.     Owen 


K  I  N  G      H  A  L  215 

Glendower,  who  was  (like  most  national  heroes, 
from  Pym  to  Robespierre)  a  lawyer,  had  raised 
the  country  behind  the  English  garrison.  He 
possessed  the  rare  accomplishment  of  causing  snow 
in  August  ;  and  his  Welsh  guerilleros  enjoyed  the 
more  substantial  assistance  of  the  French,  who 
operated  from  the  coast,  and  exhibited  in  the 
interest  of  the  Welsh  that  burning  sympathy  with 
small  nationalities  which  is  always  experienced 
by  the  enemies  of  large  nations.  This  -war,  and 
the  succeeding  period  of  feudal  confusion  which 
resulted  in  the  elimination  of  the  Percies  from  the 
governing  class,  provided  Prince  Henry  with  his 
education  in  military  statesmanship  ;  and  when  he 
inherited  the  throne,  he  took  with  avidity  to  that 
recognized  form  of  sport,  a  war  with  the  French, 
which  provided  the  Kings  of  England  with  an 
appropriate  and  dignified  pastime  before  the  public- 
spirited  institution  of  Newmarket  Heath  by  King 
Charles  II  as  a  substitute. 

If  his  biographers  have  a  fault,  it  is  that  they  are 
a  trifle  inclined,  as  military  historians,  to  exagger- 
ate the  intelligence  of  mediaeval  warfare.  Strategy 
in  the  Middle  Ages  was  an  affair  of  mere  collision. 
If  a  malicious  fate  brought  the  vaguely  roaming 
armies  in  contact,  there  was  a  battle,  and  the 
ingenuity  of  generations  of  historians  would  be 
exercised  in  attributing  to  the  respective  com- 
manders a  depth  and  a  precision  of  military  design 
of  which  they  were  profoundly  innocent.  If,  how- 
ever, the  collision  was  averted  by  some  stroke  of 
luck  or  loot,  there  was  no  battle,  and  the  campaign 
is  reduced  in  the  text-books  to  the  rank  of  a  mere 
raid.     The    exercise    of    writing    military    history 


216  PRIMITIVES 

upon  these  terms  is  an  entertaining  one  ;  and  as  it 
has  brought  merited  fame,  ennoblement,  and  a  seat 
in  the  House  of  Commons  to  Sir  Charles  Oman, 
we  must  not  deny  to  young  historians  this 
opportunity  to  place  their  foot  upon  the  first  rung 
of  the  professional  ladder. 

With  the  historical  problem  presented  by  Prince 
Plenry  as  viveur  his  biographers  are  even  more 
satisfactory  than  when  they  attempt  an  apology 
for  his  persecution  of  the  Lollards.  One  finds  it 
somehow  difficult  to  see  this  cross  between  Haroun- 
al-Raschid  and  St.  Louis  presiding  at  the  burning 
of  the  heretic  Badby  ;  and  the  fact  that  the  prince 
interrupted  the  auto-da-fe  in  order  to  offer  to  a  half- 
charred  man  a  pension  of  one  and  ninepence  a 
week  for  the  sale  of  his  soul  cannot  leave  as  favour- 
able an  impression  on  all  minds  as  it  has  on  that 
of  an  Oxford  historian.  But  the  soul  of  Oxford  is 
sometimes  above  souls. 


LADY    HAMILTON 

THE  trouble  with  Lady  Hamilton  is  that 
Nelson  left  her  to  the  nation,  when  he  ought 
to  have  left  her  to  Sir  William  Hamilton.  Perhaps 
it  was  because  the  nation  is  the  normal  legatee  of 
pictures  ;  and  Emma  was  in  herself  the  collected 
works  of  Romney.  At  any  rate,  this  singular 
legacy  of  a  beautiful  woman  and  her  daughter  was 
not  appreciated  by  its  inheritors.  It  is  an  old 
quarrel  whether  her  unhappiness  was  the  work  of 
an  ungrateful  nation,  and  there  is  small  need  to 
argue  it  now.  It  is  quite  possible  that  an  un- 
obtrusive and  adequate  pension  might  have  been 
found  for  Lady  Hamilton  after  Trafalgar.  But  she 
was  not  content  to  live  inconspicuously  upon  the 
Consolidated  Fund  ;  all  the  best  people  did  it,  but 
Emma  was  a  parvenu.  She  thirsted  for  recogni- 
tion, like  any  trade  union ;  and,  having  learnt 
heroics  in  the  kitchen,  she  saw  the  dramatic 
value  of  her  position  as  Nelson's  quasi-widow  and 
was  indisposed  to  sit  like  Patience  on  the  Nelson 
Monument.  The  results  were  seen  in  her  ten  years' 
tragedy  between  Trafalgar  and  Waterloo. 

They  were  not  years  of  neglect,  unless  notoriety 
is  neglect ;  and  they  need  not  have  been  years  of 
poverty,  if  she  had  learnt  how  to  keep  a  fortune. 
But  it  was  from  this  period,  when  she  was  black- 
mailed by   Sicilians,   persecuted  by  conveyancers, 

217 


218  PRIMITIVES 

and  imprisoned  in  the  King's  Bench,  that  her  career 
got  its  pecuhar  flavour  of  futihty.  She  had  a 
past ;  but  she  had  no  future,  which  (as  any  gram- 
marian can  see)  is  highly  irregular,  and  forms  a 
striking  contrast  to  that  greater  Emma  who  was 
the  inspiration  of  Wilkins  Micawber.  The  decline 
and  fall  of  her  empire  is  the  chief  cause  of  its  fame. 
If  Lady  Hamilton  had  disappeared  in  1805,  she 
would  have  figured  as  largely  in  English  history 
as  Walewska  or  Georges  in  the  history  of  the  First 
Empire.  But  "  Emma  forlorn  and  weeping  for 
Nelson  "  is  a  person  to  write  about,  and  the  bio- 
graphers have  buzzed  round  her  memory  like 
the  duns  round  her  front  door. 

Her  beginnings  are  interesting  to  the  collector; 
but  one  feels  that  most  of  her  biographers  might 
have  given  us  a  little  more  life  with  Nelson  and  a 
little  less  life  below  stairs.  Emma  Lyon  was  the 
child  of  an  affair  at  Hawarden,  although  her 
meteoric  career  was  more  suggestive  of  Hughenden  ; 
and  we  may,  if  we  feel  that  she  should  be  ushered 
into  the  world  with  a  blast  on  the  trumpet  of  the 
Family  Herald,  accept  the  story  which  gives  her 
a  gentleman  for  a  father.  He  became  an  amateur 
blacksmith,  and  died  of  a  consumption  that  may 
be  described  with  a  more  than  Five  Towns'  gusto. 
Like  all  literary  babies,  little  Emma  "  crowed  "  in 
the  pages  of  her  biographies ;  she  also  became 
astonishingly  pretty,  and  went  into  service  as  a 
nursemaid.  Somewhat  injudiciously  she  was  re- 
moved to  a  situation  in  London,  and  was  promoted 
kitchen-maid.  She  lost  the  place  on  account  of  some 
amateur  theatricals  conducted  in  her  mistress's 
clothes   on  the  kitchen  table ;   and  with  a  stage- 


LADY      HAMILTON  219 

struck  colleague  she  applied  to  Sheridan  for  a  part 
at  Drury  Lane.  She  was  rejected,  and  was  assisted 
to  a  less  desirable  situation  by  a  man  called  Angelo. 
It  may  be  the  misfortune  of  the  subject  rather  than 
the  fault  of  her  biographers,  but  from  this  point 
all  the  old  men  arc  unpleasant  old  men,  and  none 
of  the  young  men  are  nice  young  men. 

A  sea-captain,  a  baronet,  and  Charles  Greville 
pass  rapidly  across  the  stage,  until,  by  a  singular 
transaction,  she  was  transferred  by  Charles  to  his 
uncle.  Sir  William  Hamilton,  who  married  her  and 
made  her  Ambassadress  of  His  Britannic  Majesty 
at  Naples.  In  Naples,  which  was  ruled  by  a  stupid 
king  who  kept  a  cookshop,  she  formed  a  valuable 
friendship  with  the  Queen.  Emma  was  a  singular 
acquaintance  for  the  daughter  of  Marie  Theresa  ; 
but  royalty  could  not  be  too  particular  in  the  year 
1793.  She  learned  to  spell  late  in  life  ;  but  even  as 
Ambassadress  she  wrote  "  the  King  and  me  sang 
duetts  3  hours."  In  Naples  Emma  met  Nelson, 
who  was  in  charge  of  the  Mediterranean  blockade ; 
and  there  rather  than  in  England  she  lived  out 
the  best  years  of  her  life.  So  in  Naples  one  may 
bid  her,  in  her  own  orthography,  "  Adue." 


HERR    V.    TREITSCHKE 

THERE  is  a  story  of  Canon  Hannay's  about  a 
lady  who  broke  out  in  the  same  week  as 
the  war ;  but  she  was  nothing  to  the  hterary 
gentlemen.  In  those  first  days  of  August,  when  the 
war  swept  across  Europe  like  the  wind  out  of 
Africa,  there  was  an  ugly  rush  of  innumerable 
Pilots  to  weather  the  Storm.  Mr.  Wells  hurried 
into  his  oilskins,  Mr.  Arnold  Bennett  jumped  into 
his  sea-boots,  and  the  Poet  Laureate  heaved  a 
melodious  but  archaic  lead.  By  the  fifth  day  of 
the  French  mobilization  the  autumn  publishing 
season  was  in  full  swing,  and  the  Society  of  Authors 
clustered  round  Sir  Edward  Grey,  ingeminating, 
like  Wilkins'  Emma,  that  it  would  never  desert 
him.  It  was  as  though  the  usual  old  gentleman 
in  the  usual  Punch  cartoon  had  enquired  from  his 
window,  "  Watchman,  what  of  the  night  ?  "  and 
had  been  answered  by  the  clear  utterance  of  eight 
novelists,  five  poets,  and  Mr.  Joseph  McCabe. 
The  mast  was  almost  invisible  under  the  mass  of 
colours  that  had  been  nailed  to  it,  and  Mr.  Kipling 
alone  kept  silence  at  the  coming  in  of  war  ;  it  was 
the  silence  of  a  realist  confronted  with  reality. 

Quite  apart  from  its  agreeable  literary  conse- 
quences (Mr.  William  Archer  wrote  an  epic  poem), 
this  outburst  produced  a  startling  effect  upon  the 
war   itself.     The   distinguished    literary   men   who 

220 


H  E  R  R       V  .      T  R  E  I  T  S  C  H  K  E        221 

made  it,  were  determined  to  save  the  State.  The 
only  difficulty  was  to  find,  at  short  notice,  some 
one  to  save  it  from.  We  had  for  a  few  days  the 
inspiring  spectacle  of  a  crowd  of  Ciceros  looking 
for  Catilines  round  every  corner ;  and  since  one 
can  hardly  save  one's  country  from  people  that 
one  does  not  know,  they  very  properly  decided  to 
save  it  from  some  one  of  whom  they  had  already 
heard.  Being  unfamiliar  with  the  Germans  of  the 
General  Staff,  our  guardian  authors  resolved  unani- 
mously to  save  us  from  the  Germans  of  the  study. 
Moltke  was  a  name  to  them  and  Sehlieffen  was  even 
less  ;  but  they  had  all  read  Nietzsche  in  the  Nineties, 
and  Trcitschke  was  a  familiar  type  of  the  Continen- 
tal Anglophobe.  That  is  how  the  war  of  armies 
became  suddenly,  and  to  its  intense  surprise,  a  war 
of  ideas  :  it  was  a  startling  triumph  of  the  pene- 
trating pen  over  the  unintelligent  sword.  Great 
Britain  had  executed  a  perfectly  normal  and  proper 
intervention  in  favour  of  the  balance  of  European 
power  and  against  the  possibility  of  a  hostile  con- 
trol of  the  Low  Countries.  It  was  a  casus  belli  that 
Bolingbroke  could  have  understood  and  Canning 
would  have  applauded.  But  the  authors  of  Eng- 
land discovered  in  it  a  forlorn  hope  led  by  the 
British  diplomatic  service  against  the  perverted 
philosophy  of  Central  Europe.  That  is  how  the 
Dual  Alliance  of  Nietzsche  and  Trcitschke  was 
called  into  existence  to  hang  like  twin  Boneys  over 
the  happy  homes  of  England.  It  is  a  strange 
galere  for  a  respectable  war.  The  War  of  the 
Spanish  Succession,  which  was  fought  for  a  very 
similar  object,  had  a  very  similar  opening.  Louis 
XIV   aspired   to   the   control  of  Western   Europe, 


222  PRIMITIVES 

and,  as  is  usual  on  these  occasions,  violated  Belgian 
neutrality.  Great  Britain  very  properly,  though 
somewhat  reluctantly,  intervened ;  but  nobody 
announced  to  the  startled  subjects  of  William  III 
that  they  were  engaged  in  a  jehad  against  the 
immoral  philosophy  of  Pascal  and  Bossuet,  as 
illustrated  by  the  French  king's  violation  of  the 
Barrier  Treaty. 

The  truth  is  that  wars,  since  they  have  ceased 
to  be  legitimate  forms  of  religious  controversy,  are 
not  wars  of  ideas ;  and  in  the  present  instance  the 
selection  of  two  writers  as  villains  of  the  piece  was 
unusually  inept.  The  choice  was  not  happy,  be- 
cause their  names  (unlike  "  Huns  "  and  "  guns  ") 
would  not  rhyme  in  any  circumstances — even  when 
set  to  music ;  and  the  connection  of  one  of  them  with 
any  operation  of  German  policy  had  been  singularly 
slender.  Nietzsche,  whose  name  has  struck  terror  into 
a  thousand  sewing  parties,  was  a  remote  and  philo- 
sophic Pole.  His  contribution  to  the  plot  appears 
to  be  that,  in  the  intervals  of  "  a  certain  liveliness  " 
with  Wagner,  he  believed  in  force.  But  so  did 
Carlyle  ;  and  no  one  has  yet  demanded  the  destruc- 
tion of  Chelsea  or  suggested  that  the  Landsturm 
went  on  its  wicked,  Carlylean  way  from  Ghent  to 
Warsaw  to  the  Lowland  lilt  of  "  It's  a  long,  long 
way  to  Ecclefechan." 

The  second  villain  was  more  obviously  entitled  to 
a  place  in  the  cast.  The  trouble  with  Treitschke 
is  that  he  was  a  German.  At  a  time  when  all 
respectable  persons  east  of  the  Rhine  were  Saxons 
or  Bavarians  or  Mecklenburgers,  Treitschke  was 
a  truculent,  anti-particularist  German.  It  all  came 
of  reading  history,  which  has  undermined  so  many 


H  E  R  R      V  .      T  R  E  I  T  S  C  H  K  E        223 

bright  intelligences.  Of  course,  he  was  not  a  Ger- 
man by  extraction  ;  but  nationalists  are  rarely  auto- 
chthonous. Patriots  are  made  and  not  born  ;  and 
there  is  nothing  in  Treitschkc's  blend  of  Bohemian 
ancestry  with  Prussian  patriotism  to  startle  a 
generation  which  is  familiar  with  the  Imperialism 
of  Napoleon,  who  was  not  a  Frenchman,  or  of 
Disraeli,  who  was  not  an  Englishman.  Treitschkc's 
family  were  Czechs  called  Trschky  ;  but  they  were 
persuaded  upon  their  immigration  into  Saxony 
to  substitute  for  that  engaging  sternutation  a  name 
that  was  less  strikingly  consonantal.  Treitschke, 
however,  although  he  retained  in  his  ideas  and  in  his 
controversial  method  some  trace  of  the  militant 
Protestantism  which  had  centred  in  the  Tyn  Church 
of  Prague,  was  born  north  of  the  Riesengebirge,  and 
his  father  had  been  a  soldier  of  some  distinction  in 
the  Saxon  army.  It  was  only  twenty  years  since 
Prussia  had  failed  narrowly  to  obtain  European 
sanction  for  the  annexation  of  Saxony,  and  in  a 
Saxon  household  Prussia  was  hated  more  bitterly 
than  the  French.  This  education  produced  in 
Treitschke  an  inevitable  reaction.  The  air  was 
full  of  a  vague  nationalism,  and  the  universities, 
when  he  went  there,  were  the  preserve  of  the 
vieilles  harhes  of  1848.  After  Olmiitz,  where  Prussia 
suffered  humiliation  at  the  hands  of  Austria,  the 
Hohcnzollern  were  regarded  almost  as  the  martyrs 
of  the  German  cause  ;  and  when  Treitschke  went  to 
Freiburg  as  a  graduate  of  half  the  universities  in 
South  Germany,  he  worshipped  Prussia  with  the 
full  enthusiasm  of  a  man  who  lived  in  Baden. 

At  Freiburg  he  developed  still  further  his  fierce 
detestation   of   Kleinstaaterei.      The    small   States 


224  PRIMITIVES 

of  Germany  were  not  an  inspiring  spectacle,  and 
Trcitschke  found  himself  in  sympathy  with  Bis- 
marck's elimination  of  the  Middle  States  and  Offen- 
bach's later  ridicule  of  the  Grande- Duchesse  de 
Gerolstein.  An  educated  man  revolted  inevitably 
against  the  unintelligence  of  Rhenish  Clericals, 
who  looked  alternately  to  Vienna  and  to  Rome, 
and  against  the  unimportance  of  minor  royalty, 
which  looked  exclusively  at  itself.  Treitschke  with 
his  Prussian  sympathies  could  not  acquiesce  in 
the  mediatized  motto  "  Beust  will  be  Beust  "  ;  and 
he  discerned  in  the  Hohenzollern  a  dynasty  that 
had  done  something  for  itself  and  for  Germany, 
and  in  their  present  Minister  a  man  who  might  do 
more.  In  the  year  of  Sadowa  Bismarck  summoned 
him  to  Berlin  and  offered  him  a  place  in  the  Prussian 
Press  Bureau ;  it  was  refused,  and  Treitschke 
departed  to  a  chair  at  Kiel.  There  he  endeavoured 
without  marked  success  to  impress  upon  the  under- 
graduates of  Schleswig-Holstein  their  place  in 
German  history ;  and  he  returned  with  obvious 
relief  to  Heidelberg.  From  this  point  Treitschke's 
academic  career  became  an  easy  course  of  official 
preferment.  In  1864  he  had  urged  Prussia  to 
annex  the  Danish  Duchies  : 

"  The  good  cause  will  triumph,  the  heirs  of 
Frederick  the  Great  will  reign  in  Schleswig- 
Holstein,  and  in  a  short  time  the  nation  will 
be  ashamed  of  its  own  stupidity." 

In  1870  he  argued  the  case  for  the  annexation  of 
Alsace-Lorraine  on  the  sound  military  basis  that 
"  we  only  demand  the  German  lands  of  France 
and  so  much  Romance  land  as  is  necessary  for  their 


HERR       V.       TREITSCHKE       225 

security."  His  admission  of  military  necessity 
as  a  test  for  the  trace  of  frontiers  has  been  as  fatal 
to  a  defeated  Germany  as  his  later  admission,  made 
in  the  hope  that  Germany  would  one  day  be '  an 
African  or  Asiatic  Power,  that  coloured  troops 
may  be  used  in  European  warfare,  was  unpalatable 
to  a  Germany  at  war  with  Algerian  France  and 
Indian  England, 

As  a  lecturer  and  historian  Treitschke  developed 
two  things  which  have  made  him  a  name  to  most 
of  us.  In  company  w^ith  most  Continental  observers, 
he  believed  that  England  was  in  a  state  of  hopeless 
decay,  and  that  the  colonies  which  it  had  obtained 
by  fraud,  might  be  removed  by  force,  differing 
from  Victor  Hugo  only  in  the  view  that  Germany 
rather  than  France  was  the  expectant  heir.  He  was 
driven  to  this  conclusion  by  a  profoundly  interesting 
philosophy  of  English  history,  which  was  not  much 
further  from  the  truth  than  most  English  readings 
of  Continental  history.  His  indignation  was  very 
properly  stirred  by  the  spectacle  of  the  "  weak 
John  Bull  "  allied  with  the  palsied  Turk  ;  and  he 
offered  the  disinterested  suggestion  of  an  Anglo- 
Russian  alliance.  The  suggestion  has  been  gratefully 
acted  on.  But  the  neo-Turkish  cry  of  Deutschland 
iiber  Allah  is  hardly  consistent  with  Trcitschke's 
pronounced  preference  for  the  destruction  of  Turkey. 

His  second  and  more  notorious  contribution  to 
politics  is  the  theory  of  international  contract,  that 

"  all  treaties  under  international  law  embody 
the  clause  rebus  sic  stantibus.  Tlic  State  has  no 
higher  Judge  above  it,  and  will  therefore  con- 
clude all  treaties  with  that  mental  reservation." 

15 


226  PRIMITIVES 

It  is  extremely  bad  law  ;  but  it  is  exceedingly  good 
Prussian  history. 

The  strangest  thing  about  Treitschke's  career 
is  that  it  was  purely  academic.  He  definitely 
became  one  of  the  wild-eyed  prophetic  lecturers 
of  the  Sixties,  who  paced  the  rostrum  like  a  quarter- 
deck. There  appears  to  be  a  place  in  German 
politics  for  the  academic  person,  a  fact  which 
enabled  Treitschke,  who  was  completely  deaf,  to 
gain  a  hearing  from  the  Reichstag  which  he  could 
not  hear. 

The  academic  person  has  been  less  fortunate 
in  his  intrusions  into  the  politics  of  other  countries. 
Sir  Richard  Jebb  sat  for  years  at  Westminster 
without  importing  into  the  proceedings  of  the  House 
of  Commons  much  of  the  level  mood  of  Sophocles  ; 
Mr.  Herbert  Fisher  (it  is  profoundly  to  his  credit) 
has  never  really  gone  into  polities  ;  and  of  Dr. 
Wilson,  who  deserted  a  Chair  for  a  throne  and  left 
the  throne  for  one  of  those  eminences  from  which 
one  is  privileged  to  view  all  the  kingdoms  of  the 
earth  in  highly  undesirable  company,  it  is  too  early, 
perhaps  it  will  always  be  too  early  to  speak. 


MR.    WILFRID    BLUNT 

DIARISTS,  in  the  painful  experience  of  any  one 
who  has  tried  to  keep  a  journal  upon  inade- 
quate material,  are  made  and  not  born.  They  are 
most  completely  the  creatures  of  circumstance, 
totally  dependent  for  their  merit  upon  the  actual 
interest  of  their  environment.  Thus,  any  student 
of  Swinburne  knows  that  a  man  may  write  lyrics 
of  the  high  seas  in  Putney  ;  and  a  recent  observer 
actually  saw  William  Morris  composing  epic  poems 
with  what  the  divorce  lawyer  would  call  a  Plammer- 
smith  domicil.  But  if  a  man's  diary  is  to  be  any- 
thing beyond  an  anxiety  to  his  grandchildren,  he 
must  live  in  the  world.  One  has  suffered  too  long 
under  this  sort  of  thing  : — 

Sunday. — Drove  this  morning  to  Newington 
Butts  to  see  the  fresh  primroses.  How  wonder- 
ful Nature  is,  to  be  sure.  We  dined  with 
William.  Walter  was  there  with  his  young 
wife,  and  a  Mr.  Babbagc,  of  the  Poor  Law 
Board ;  very  entertaining.  Jane  found  him 
extremely  genteel,  for  a  public  functionary. 
He  says  that  Palmcrston's  Government  is 
riding  for  a  fall,  and  that  Lord  John  is  in  high 
hopes.     I  wonder. 

That  is  perhaps  why  one  winces  a  little  at  every 
new  announcement  that  another  diary  is  t  »  be  torn 


228  PRIMITIVES 

from  its  legitimate  retreat  in  the  mahogany  bureau 
under  the  bust  of  Charles  James  Fox  and  thrust, 
mildly  protesting,  into  publicity. 

A  diary,  as  such,  possesses  no  more  intrinsic 
interest  than  an  antique.  But  if  either  of  these 
objects,  in  addition  to  being  an  original  journal  or 
genuine  Chippendale,  happens  to  possess  charm  or 
beauty  or  unpublished  points  of  view,  its  exhibi- 
tion is  one  of  the  best  things  that  can  happen  to 
the  discoverer.  The  diary  of  Mr.  Wilfrid  Blunt, 
reinforced  by  his  later  comments  and  explanations, 
belongs  easily  to  this  fortunate  class;  and  it  deserves 
a  better  fate  than  that  evisceration  by  hasty 
journalistic  persons  in  search  of  anecdotes  about 
well-known  people  which  is  the  normal  destiny  of 
reprinted  journals.  The  writer  of  it  moved  with 
an  air  of  graceful  and  distinguished  eccentricity 
through  the  semi-political  monde  of  the  Nineties 
and  escaped,  by  reason  of  his  social  position,  those 
dreary  and  uninforming  dinners  with  William, 
Walter  and  his  young  wife  to  which  I  have  already 
referred.  His  set  was  adorned  on  the  political 
side  by  the  Radical  members  of  Mr.  Gladstone's 
last  Government,  by  young  George  Wyndham  and 
young  George  Curzon,  who  "  was,  as  usual,  the 
most  brilliant ;  he  never  flags  for  an  instant  either 
in  speech  or  repartee  "  {quantum  mutatus  ah  illo 
Hectore),  and — one  almost  gropes  for  the  more 
impressive  interlineated  "  and "  of  the  theatre 
programme  which  introduces  the  Leading  Lady — 
Margot  Tennant.  She  first  appears  like  a  female 
Paris  (and  both  the  arbitrator  and  the  capital  city 
of  that  name  are  essentially  feminine)  awarding 
the  apple  between  "  her  political  admirers,  Haldane 


MR.       WILFRID       BLUNT         229 


and  Asquith "  ;  then  after  her  engagement  to 
"  a  little  smooth-shaved  middle-aged  man,  with  a 
beatific  smile  on  his  face,  as  of  one  to  whom  Heaven's 
doors  have  been  opened "  ;  and  finally  on  the 
wedding  day,  when  "  Margot  was  pale,  very  pale, 
but  firm  and  decided,  Asquith  much  smartened 
up."  There  are  moments  when  Mr.  Blunt's 
Memoires  pour  servir  a  Vhistoire  de  mon  temps 
positively  rise  to  the  interest  of  a  Society  paper, 
when  his  old  Adam  approximates  to  the  young, 
contemporary  Eve. 

As  no  well-informed  diary  de  nos  jours  would  be 
complete  without  a  new  and  thoroughly  authentic 
narrative  of  the  dismal  crime  passionnel  of  the 
late  Crown  Prince  Rudolph,  Mr.  Blunt  conscien- 
tiously presents  posterity  with  a  version  of  the 
Meyerling  story  that  is  even  newer  and  more  authen- 
tic than  usual.  He  listened  to  William  Morris 
shouting  down  the  bargees  of  the  Upper  Thames 
and  enjoying  that  advantage  which  bourgeois  poets 
must  always  possess  in  contests  of  pure  imagination, 
until  this  country  achieves  a  real  equality  of 
educational  opportunity.  And  he  is  thoroughly 
in  the  fashion  for  depreciating  the  personal  equip- 
ment of  Meredith,  whom  he  found  *'  a  queer, 
voluble  creature,  with  a  play-acting  voice,  and 
conversation  like  one  dictating  to  a  secretary,  a 
constant  search  for  epigrams." 

An  earher  journal,  which  Mr.  Blunt  kept  in  Paris 
during  the  hot  weather  of  1870,  forms  a  most  interest- 
ing addition  to  the  book.  He  watched  from  the 
angle  of  the  British  Embassy  the  gradual  clouding 
of  the  European  sky,  and  he  heard  the  bursting  of 
the  Prussian  storm  with    the  small-minded  enjoy- 


230  PRIMITIVES 

ment  of  an  Orleanist  who  could  not  resist  his  satis- 
faction at  the  slow  stumbles  of  Napoleon  III,  as  he 
went  wearily  to  his  fall.  So  small  was  his  sym- 
pathy with  the  dynasty  that  he  was  apparently 
under  the  impression  that  Rouher,  the  Vice- 
Empereur  who  had  governed  France  for  a  decade, 
was  named  **  Rouerc.*'  Mentana,  the  triumph  of 
the  chassepot,  appears  under  a  singularly  Trans- 
atlantic disguise  as  "  Montana  "  ;  and  Mr.  Gladstone's 
thoroughly  effective  intervention  in  favour  of  Bel- 
gian neutrality  is  dismissed  as  "  that  absurd  Belgian 
treaty."  It  is  a  form  of  absurdity  to  which  British 
statesmanship  has  been  honourably  prone. 

But  the  bulk  of  the  volume  is  filled  w  ith  the  sub- 
ject of  which  Mr.  Blunt  is,  from  his  own  angle,  an 
acknowledged  master — Egypt.  The  iniquity  of  the 
British  occupation,  the  Machiavellianism  of  Evelyn 
Baring,  and  the  astute  journalism  of  Alfred  Milner 
form  a  background  to  the  whole  picture  of  Mr.  Blunt 
and  his  contemporaries.  The  long  mutter  of  his 
resentment  against  the  slow  unfolding  of  the  Im- 
perialist design  in  Africa  is  like  the  drone  of  the  bag- 
pipes under  the  air  which  he  plays.  Wherever  he 
looked  in  the  Nineties  he  found  "the  white  scramble 
for  Africa  "  in  its  undignified  and  never-receding 
progress.  Egypt,  Morocco,  Uganda,  and  Rhodesia 
each  had  their  turn  ;  and  Mr.  Blunt's  outspoken 
advocacy  was  always  equally  at  the  disposal  of 
fellahin  and  Matabele.  His  narrative  of  Egyptian 
events  forms  a  most  valuable  apparatus  criticus  to 
Lord  Cromer's  Modern  Egypt ;  and  apart  from  its 
historical  merit,  his  journal  is  the  fine  and  enduring 
presentation  of  a  fearless  and  honourable  career. 


IN   ME  MORI  AM 

LORD   KITCHENER 
MONS-GALLIPOLI 
RONALD   POULTON 


LORD    KITCHENER 

BIOGRAPHY,  like  big  game  hunting,  is  one 
of  the  recognized  forms  of  sport  ;  and  it  is 
as  unfair  as  only  sport  can  be.  High  on  some  far 
hill-side  of  politics  or  history  the  amateur  marks 
down  his  distant  quarry.  Follows  an  intensely 
distasteful  period  of  furtive  approach  to  the  subject, 
which  leads  the  deer-stalker  up  gullies  and  ravines 
and  the  biographer  through  private  letters  and 
washing-books.  The  burns  grow  deeper  and  wetter, 
the  letters  take  a  more  private  and  a  less  publishable 
turn,  until  at  last  our  sportsman,  well  within 
range,  turns  to  his  publisher,  who  carries  the  guns, 
and  empties  one,  two,  and  (if  the  public  will  stand 
it)  three  barrels  into  his  unprotesting  victim  ; 
because  it  is  a  cruel  truth  that  the  subjects  of 
Lives  are  rarely  themselves  alive.  It  is  at  once 
the  shame  of  biographers  and  the  guarantee  of 
their  marksmanship  that  they  are  perpetually 
shooting  the  sitting  statesman. 

But  if  biography  is  to  have  any  higher  value 
than  mere  anecdote,  its  central  figure  must  bring 
something  more  to  the  historical  imagination  than 
the  titillation  of  scandal  or  the  whisper  of  reve- 
lations. It  is  not  enough  that  he  should  confide 
to  us  what  the  Duke  really  said  in  the  Lobby 
when  the  Bill  was  thrown  out,  or  whether  it  is 
true  that  the  Regent  upon  one  occasion  went 
somewhat  further  than  he  was  hitherto  believed 


234  IN      M  E  M  O  R  I  A  M 

to  have  gone.  But  he  must  be  a  person  whose 
career  summarizes  in  a  convenient  form  the  tone 
and  temper  of  his  age ;  and  that,  in  a  quite  surprising 
degree,  does  the  career  of  Lord  Kitchener. 

One  had  come  to  regard  him  so  mechanically  as 
a   unique   phenomenon   in   British   life.     But   this 
fallacy,  like  so  many  more,   is  a  legacy  of  1914, 
when   a   clean-shaven   country   swept   an   anxious 
hand  over  its  upper  lip  in  search  of  some  counter- 
poise to  Hohenzollern  and  Hindenburg,  and  found 
in  Kitchener  the  one  moustache  whose  dimensions 
were    sufficiently    sabreur,    the    one    collar    whose 
altitude  was  adequately  Teutonic  to  fill  the  military 
bill.     The  paragraphists  have  spoilt  our  apprecia- 
tion  of  him   with   their   dreary   insistence   on   his 
Himalayan  solitude.     In  reality,  he  was  a  highly- 
generalized  version  of  that  exquisitely  character- 
istic   figure,    the    Victorian    soldier.     In    his    first 
phase,  when  Mr.  Disraeli  was  Prime  Minister,  one 
finds  in  him  a  rich  example  of  that  blend  of  soldiering 
with   Christian   connoisseurship   which   rose  to   its 
greatest    and    most    baroque    heights    in    General 
Gordon.     '*  My  dear  Miss  Conder,"  he  wrote  to  a 
brother-officer's  sister,  "  I  send  you  some  informa- 
tion about  the  vestments  of  the  Church  of  England 
that   you   wished   to   have "  ;     and   thereupon   he 
makes  such  play  with  Stoles,  Albs,  Copes,  Tunicles, 
and  Chasubles  as  would  do  credit  to  a  diocesan 
conference,    and    closes    upon    an    arch    sectarian 
joke    ("  I    must    now    end    this    popish    letter ") 
whose  positively  kittenish   note  would  have  pro- 
ceeded more  naturally  from  a  pale  young  curate. 
In  the  next  chapter  he  becomes  a  more  popular 
figure  that  might  have  walked  into  any  magazine 


LORD       KITCHENER       235 

story  between  the  year  1885  and  the  second 
Jubilee  without  exeiting  the  reader's  suspicion. 
The  scene  is  perpetually  set  upon  a  shifting  carpet 
of  burning  sand  ;  under  the  coppery  glare  of  an 
African  sky  a  few  Baggara  crouch  muttering  round 
a  low  fire  outside  a  black  tent  or  so,  and  there  is 
a  general  feeling  that  something  has  been  happening 
beyond  Wady  Haifa  or  the  Tenth  Cataract  or  in 
Darfur  or  Kordofan.  But  a  tall  figure  strides  in 
among  them.  The  hair,  the  dress,  the  beard  are 
Mahdist  enough  ;  but  that  gesture  of  command  can 

only   be   an    Englishman's — it   is    Captain  of 

the  Frontier  Force !  That  is  a  popular  frame  into 
which  almost  every  picture  of  Kitchener's  early 
and  middle  life  will  fit.  He  was  intensely  typical 
of  the  Victorian  scene,  and  it  is  that  fact  which 
gives  to  his  long  career  its  real  value  for  the 
picturesque  historian. 

Born  a  few  months  before  the  Great  Exhibition, 
when  the  Prince  Consort  had  eleven  years  still  to 
live,  he  enjoyed  an  education  which  was  the  play- 
thing of  Irish  governesses  and  the  holiday  task  of 
a  Rugby  master.  Indeed  it  may  well  be  that  if 
he  had  gone  nearer  to  any  public  school,  he  would 
have  grown  up  a  less  perfect  public  school  boy  ; 
the  system  might  have  provoked  reactions.  At 
the  age  of  thirteen  some  educational  eccentricity 
of  his  family  directed  him  to  a  school  near  Geneva, 
and  it  is  a  solemn  thought  that  a  few  years  earlier 
the  crocodile  in  which  the  gaunt  young  Kitchener 
paced  might  have  passed  on  that  Calvinist  shore 
another  line  of  schoolboys,  in  which  ambled,  out  of 
step,  mildly  observant,  his  head  deep  in  the  Revue 
des  Deux  Mondes,  Master  Henry  James,  junior,  of 


236  IN       M  E  M  O  R  I  A  M 

Cambridge,  Mass.     But  one  doubts,  somehow,  if  an 
encounter  would  have  led  to  an  intimacy. 

Five  years  later,  at  Woolwich,  he  set  his  foot  to 
the  military  ladder  and  diversified  his  technical 
studies  with  the  dreadful  pastime  of  reading  the 
Old  Testament  in  Hebrew.  Warfare  began  for  him 
with  a  flying  glimpse  of  the  almost  equally  flying 
operations  of  the  Second  Army  of  the  Loire  in 
Brittany.  The  Franco-Prussian  War  had  attracted 
large  numbers  of  able-bodied  Anglo-Saxon  sight- 
seers :  Sir  Charles  Dilke  had  been  to  Worth  with 
the  Crown  Prince,  Mr.  Labouchere  was  in  Paris 
with  Trochu,  and  it  was  only  natural  that  two 
gentlemen  cadets  should  take  train  through  the 
snow  in  search  of  Chanzy.  His  service  in  1871, 
which  was  almost  confined  to  taking  pleurisy  in  a 
balloon,  was  rewarded  by  the  issue  of  a  French 
war-medal  in  1913 ;  the  delay  was  a  character- 
istically graceful  tribute  by  the  Ministry  of  War 
to  the  methods  of  British  military  administration. 
He  was  retrieved  by  an  anxious  parent,  scolded 
at  the  Horse  Guards  by  a  maternal  Commander- 
in-Chief  of  the  Blood  Royal,  and  finally  gazetted 
to  the  Royal  Engineers. 

The  army  which  the  Duke  of  Cambridge  com- 
manded for  Queen  Victoria  in  her  early  widowhood 
can  hardly  have  provided  a  young  enthusiast  with 
an  exhilarating  arena.  While  Frenchmen,  Ger- 
mans, Austrians,  Italians,  and  Danes  had  seen 
creditable  and  recent  service  on  the  continent  of 
Europe,  British  soldiers  had  little  beyond  doubtful 
memories  of  the  Crimea  to  set  beside  their  archaic 
recollections  of  the  wars  against  Napoleon.  It  was 
a  depressing  period,  in  which  the  Line  regiments 


LORD       KITCHENER        237 


were  provided  with  an  unconvincing  imitation  of 
the  Prussian  helmet,  in  a  vague  hope  that  it  would 
act   as   an   agreeable   substitute   for   the   Prussian 
Staff  College.     Three  years  of  Chatham  and  Alder- 
shot,   with   an   excursion  to  the   Austrian  Kaiser- 
manover  of   1873,  proved  thoroughly  unsatisfying. 
Bridging  and    the   field   telegraph  failed   to   bind 
Kitchener  to  the  Engineer's  career  ;  and  in  1874 
that  singular  young  man  was  loaned  to  the  Palestine 
Exploration  Fund  for  its  survey  of  the  Holy  Land. 
It  is  possible  that  he  was  not  precisely  such  stuff 
as  Schliemanns  are  made  of.    But,  something  of  a 
Hebraist  and  more  of  a  Bible  student,  he  entered 
keenly  on  any  work  in  which  the  pill  of  archaeology 
was   gilded   with   the   glamour   of  oriental   travel. 
For  eight  years  he  disappeared  into  the  dust  of  the 
Levant.     His  cartography  was  sometimes  leavened 
with  street-fighting ;  and  in  1878  he  was  honoured 
with   a   special   summons   to  Cyprus,  in   order   to 
survey  the  latest,  if  somewhat  uncut,  diamond  which 
Lord    Beaconsfield   had    added   to   his    astonished 
sovereign's    crown.     In    the    later    weeks    of    the 
Russo-Turkish   War   he   followed   the   Turks    into 
Thrace,  an  exploit  which  the  gyrations  of  Turkish 
policy  unfortunately  prevented  him  from  turning 
to  propagandist  account  during  the  war  of  1914  ; 
and  a  few  years  later  he  almost  turned  archaeologist 
for  life  on  a  proposal  of  the  British  Museum  that 
he    should    excavate    in    Assyria    and    Babylonia. 
This  accident,  which  so  nearly  happened,  resembles 
that  chance  which  almost  sent  Mirabeau  to  com- 
mence  bookseller    in   Kiel,   and  that    other  which 
so  nearly  promoted  General  Bonaparte  to  the  post 
of  instructor  in  the  Turkish  artillery. 


238  IN       M  E  M  O  R  I  A  M 

With  the  dawn  of  the  Eighties  Egypt  took  the 
stage ;  and  until  she  left  it  after  Omdurman, 
Kitchener  was  perpetually  in  her  train.  He  appears 
first  as  a  Bimbashi  of  Egyptian  cavalry,  who 
heightened  its  prestige  by  inventing  an  incredible 
light  blue  uniform ;  then  as  a  commander  of 
native  irregulars  and  secret  agent  in  the  Korosko 
and  Bayuda  Deserts ;  and  finally  as  the  Sirdar  who 
made  the  Egyptian  Army,  rounded  up  Osman 
Digna,  and  broke  the  Khalifa.  His  Egyptian  service 
had  in  it  a  real  note  of  service  for  Egypt ;  and  his 
militarism  was  never  so  military,  his  Imperialism 
not  half  so  imperial  as  the  tone  of  the  men  who 
followed  in  his  wake.  His  final  biography  does 
much  to  clear  his  work  from  the  unpleasant  colour 
with  which  it  had  been  daubed  by  such  words  as 
Bishop  Brindle's  detestable  crow  of  episcopal 
triumph  : 

"  The  tribes  had  taken  Dongola,  and  we  had 
to  move  them  out.  We  did  so — thoroughly. 
They  ran  for  their  lives,  mothers  throwing 
down  their  babies  on  the  sands,  leaving  them 
as  hostages." 

That  was  never  the  tone  in  which  Kitchener  thought 
of  his  work  :  perhaps  he  had  not  read  enough 
Kipling. 

In  his  next  period  (it  was  not  his  second  manner, 
because  his  manner  never  changed),  he  finished  the 
war  in  South  Africa  and  reorganized  the  forces  in 
India.  As  he  was  a  successful,  so  he  was  not  a 
romantic  soldier  ;  and  the  man  who  had  substituted 
railway-lines  for  heroism  in  the  Sudan  preferred 
barbed   wire   to   grand   strategy   in   Cape   Colony. 


LORD       KITCHENER       239 


His  Indian  exploit  possesses  for  connoisseurs  of 
Lord  Curzon  all  the  interest  which  attaches  to  an 
Ajax  who  defied  the  lightning  without  ill-effects  ; 
and  his  government  of  Egypt  in  the  years  between 
the  coronation  of  King  George  V  and  the  outbreak 
of  war  has  a  considerable  provincial  importance. 

But  his  career,  which  had  been  passed  hitherto 
among  coloured  peoples,  was  to  acquire  suddenly 
the  deeper  significance  which  is  inseparable  from 
the  direction  of  a  great  white  State.     A  man  made 
bad  use  of  a  Browning  pistol  in  a  back  street  in 
Bosnia ;    the  world  of  white  men  stood  to  arms  ; 
and  Kitchener  came  to  the  War  Office  to  serve, 
so  long  as  he  lived,  as  the  first  military  adviser  of 
the  country  which  he  made  the  first  military  power 
in   the    world.      By    a    queerness    of   which    only 
Englishmen  are  capable,  his  war  service  has  become 
a  subject  of  controversy.     One  of  our  Ciceros,  in 
his  anxiety  to  exhibit  himself  as  the  only  authorized 
saviour  of  the  State,  has  his  doubts.     One  of  our 
conquerors,  whose  pen,  since  he  exchanged  G.H.Q. 
for  the  Viceregal  Lodge,  is  unquestionably  mightier 
than    his    sword,    has    his    misgivings.     And   what 
remains  ?     The  record  of  a  man  who  built  broad 
and  deep  in  the  first  months,  and  smaller  men  took 
the  fame  of  it  in  the  last ;    who  stamped  with  his 
foot  upon  the  ground,  and  men  in  ranks  rose  out 
of  it.     His  achievement  is  of  the  order  of  deeds 
which  men  write  upon  stone.     But  they  do  not 
argue  about  them. 


MONS— GALLIPOLI 

THERE  is  a  certain  state  of  mind,  unless 
perhaps  it  is  a  state  of  health,  which 
prefers  its  hopes  forlorn.  It  can  only  breathe  in 
the  tense  air  of  disaster ;  and  failure  has  quite  a 
success  with  it.  Any  student  of  opinion  will  tell 
you  that,  with  a  British  posterity,  one  sound,  ro- 
mantic defeat  will  go  twice  as  far  as  three  vulgar 
victories ;  and  nothing  in  London  is  more  sig- 
nificant than  the  fact  that  Gordon,  who  failed,  is 
in  Trafalgar  Square,  whilst  Napier,  who  succeeded, 
has  penetrated  no  further  than  Waterloo  Place. 
Contemporaries  may  be  incommoded  by  the  loss 
of  a  war ;  but  posterity,  if  the  historians  know 
their  business,  is  a  glutton  for  failure. 

This  temper,  which  is  as  early  as  the  Chanson 
de  Roland  and  as  late  as  the  latest  book  on  the 
Dardanelles,  is  not  entirely  peculiar  to  these  islands  ; 
but  it  is  on  British  territory  that  it  has  found  its 
fullest  expression.  Deriving  small  satisfaction  from 
the  monotonies  of  military  success,  and  taking  little 
pleasure  in  the  brass  and  cymbals  of  triumphant 
marches,  it  turns  a  sensitive  ear  to  catch  the  waihng 
minor  and  the  muffled  drums  as  the  Lost  Legion 
goes  by.  It  feeds,  like  some  sick  bee,  upon  the 
shrunken  laurels  of  defeat ;  and  if  it  has  a  favourite 
General,  he  is  probably  Sir  John  Moore.  Lord 
Nelson  and,  in  a  smaller  degree,  Lord  Kitchener, 

240 


M  O  N  S— G  ALLIPOLI  241 


humoured  it  when  they  atoned  for  a  career  of 
victory  with  a  death  so  ill-timed  that  it  was  almost 
as  good  as  a  defeat ;  and  even  Mr.  Kipling,  who 
is  at  other  times  a  most  regular  attendant  at 
divine  worship  on  the  side  of  the  big  battalions, 
paid  an  unusual  tribute  to  the  British  taste  for 
reverses  when  he  dwelt  lovingly  on  the  panic  of 
the  "  Fore  and  Aft,"  known  to  a  less  chauvinistic 
Army  List  of  the  early  Nineties  as  *'  The  Fore  and 
Fit,  Princess  Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen-Auspach's 
Merthyr-Tydfilshire  Own  Royal  Loyal  Light 
Infantry." 

The  mood  is  a  queer  one,  with  its  sentimental 
hankering  after  frustrated  effort.  It  loves  the 
bridges  to  go  down  behind  an  anxious  army  ;  it 
rejoices  as  the  Matabele  come  in  with  the  assegai 
between  the  white-topped  waggons  of  the  laager ; 
and  it  is  never  so  happy  as  when  a  British  square 
is  broken  in  the  desert  south  of  Korti  and  the 
Baggara  sweep  in,  slashing  and  stabbing  round  the 
jammed  Catling.  Its  taste  is  all  for  the  half-lights 
and  the  subdued  tones  of  unsuccess;  and  it  is, 
so  far  as  it  relates  to  mihtary  failure,  a  peculiarly 
British  taste.  One  cannot  remember  any  Roman 
writer  who  felt  the  wistful  charm  of  Carrhae ; 
Jena  Day  was  never  widely  celebrated  in  Prussia  ; 
and  one  has  not  heard  that  an  unduly  prominent 
place  is  occupied  by  the  Armada  in  the  curriculum 
of  the  Spanish  primary  schools.  But  an  island 
people  is  agreeably  inclined  to  apply  to  land  warfare 
romantic  canons  by  which  it  would  never  dream 
of  measuring  failure  in  the  more  serious  fields  of 
commerce  or  war  by  sea.  There  is  no  spot-light 
of  romance  centred  on  heroic   bankrupts   or  un- 

16 


242  IN       M  E  M  O  R  I  A  M 

successful  admirals.  It  is  only  on  land  that  the 
English  display  this  engaging  temper  of  retrospective 
defeatism. 

Four  years  of  war  have  inevitably  provided  this 
mood  with  some  highly  promising  raw  material. 
There  is  a  queer  tendency  In  the  purveyors  of  our 
war  literature  to  prefer  the  stormy  romance  of 
Mons  and  the  sunlit  tragedy  of  Gallipoli  to  the 
simpler,  more  direct  appeal  of  victory  in  Palestine 
and  Mesopotamia  or  the  decisive  triumphs  of  the 
French  summer  of  1918.  The  historical  instinct  is 
a  sound  one,  when  it  focusses  the  attention  of 
posterity  upon  the  opening  moves  in  the  great 
game ;  and  there  is,  besides  the  sentimental  appeal 
of  it,  a  real  importance  In  the  growing  literature 
of  Mons  and  the  Marne.  The  history  of  Europe 
for  a  generation  to  come,  and  perhaps  the  life  of 
mankind  in  the  whole  future  which  remains  to  it, 
was  profoundly  modified  by  the  events  of  that 
hot  harvest-time  of  1914,  when  the  fine  flower  of 
German  military  education  drew  a  bow  at  anything 
but  a  venture,  and  missed.  It  is  true  that  it  took 
the  Allies  four  years  to  win  the  war  which  the 
Germans  had  lost  in  1914 ;  but  the  history  of  any 
month  of  those  four  years  which  followed  is  of 
less  significance  than  the  story  of  any  half-hour 
in  the  six  weeks  which  had  gone  before. 

General  Lanrezac's  story  is  in  many  ways  the 
most  illuminating.  One  begins  in  it  at  the  very 
beginning,  when  the  wires  were  still  humming 
between  the  European  capitals  with  solutions  of 
the  Serbian  impasse.  A  roomful  of  Generals  sat 
round  a  table  in  the  Rue  St.  Dominique,  and  an 
imperturbable  old  gentleman  with  a  heavy  mous- 


M  O  N  S— G  A  L  L  I  P  O  L  I  243 

tache  smiled  indomitably  (and  even  a  trifle  irri- 
tatingly)  at  his  anxious  questioners.  One  General 
came  away  from  the  conference  asking  fretfully 
whether  Joffre  "  had  an  idea  "  ;  and  one  is  left 
with  an  uneasy  feeling  that  if  he  had,  it  was  the 
idea  of  Wilkins  Micawber.  It  is  desolating  to 
realize  that  upon  these  frivolous  old  gentlemen, 
with  their  false  mystery  and  their  half-developed 
"  science  "  of  war,  rested  the  continued  existence 
of  European  democracy.  No  spectacle  of  equal 
inadequacy  was  presented  to  mankind  until  the 
meeting  of  the  Peace  Conference  nearly  five  years 
later,  when  the  pigmies  went  mud-larking  round 
the  foundations  of  the  New  Jerusalem. 

After  this  vivid  glimpse  of  an  August  afternoon  in 
Paris,  the  story  deepens  ;  and  one  has  the  torturing 
spectacle  of  French  Headquarters  straining  their 
eyes  eastwards  for  the  dust  of  the  German  advance, 
whilst  the  fevered  Lanrezac  on  the  Belgian  frontier 
insisted  in  tones  of  increasing  asperity  that  the 
danger  lay  in  the  North.  At  this  point  the  Germans 
take  up  the  tale,  and  General  von  Kluck  takes 
station  on  the  right  of  the  German  line  to  sweep 
across  Belgium,  swing  half-left,  and  then,  shep- 
herding an  unwilling  flock  before  him,  to  drive 
down  from  the  frontier  into  the  heart  of  France. 
He  struck  and  failed ;  and  the  story  of  that  failure 
is  told  by  him  in  the  level  tones  of  an  oflicial 
memorandum,  drafted  in  1915  and  revised  three 
years  later,  at  a  time  when  there  was  still  a  German 
Empire  and  a  legend  of  Teutonic  invincil^ility, 
but  a  deposed  Army  commander  might  strike  a 
more  impressive  attitude  in  the  theatre  of  posterity 
by  transferring  a  little  blame  to  Great  Headquarters. 


244  IN       M  E  M  O  R  I  A  M 

It  is  the  function  of  the  technical  mihtary 
historian  to  vindramatize  the  most  dramatic  events 
in  history  ;  he  could  probably  reduce  King  Lear 
to  an  appreciation  of  the  general  situation  on  the 
Heath,  operation  orders  of  the  French  army,  and 
a  despatch  from  the  Earl  of  Kent  to  the  Secretary 
of  State  for  War.  General  von  Kluck  has  purged 
his  drama  of  all  its  pity  and  all  its  terror  with  more 
than  Aristotelian  thoroughness ;  and  one  would 
hardly  guess,  without  looking  at  the  place  names, 
that  the  even  voice  with  its  Staff  College  pedantry 
was  telling  the  tale  of  that  incredible  August,  when 
men  fought  all  day  and  marched  all  night  and 
remade  a  world  in  the  white  dust  of  the  French 
roads.  It  all  reads  so  like  the  report  of  an  Army 
Inspector  on  the  autumn  manoeuvres  of  1912,  that 
one  waits  automatically  for  the  crashing  charge  of 
massed  cavalry  with  which  a  courtly  Staff  generally 
titillated  the  military  imagination  of  Imperial 
Majesty  ;  and  one  starts  at  the  sudden  discovery 
of  a  real  enemy  killing  and  being  killed,  and  a 
finale  on  the  Marne  which  owed  nothing  to  German 
stage-management. 

The  story  of  Mons  found  a  happy  ending  on  the 
Marne  ;  but  Gallipoli  marches  towards  its  catas- 
trophe like  the  Agamemnon.  In  the  first  act  light- 
hearted  warships  slide  up  and  down  a  blue  sea, 
tossing  shell  into  nineteenth-century  forts.  Follows 
a  pause,  in  which  an  amiable  gentleman  took  orders 
in  a  room  in  Whitehall ;  and  then  a  party  of  Generals 
found  themselves  installed  in  a  cruiser  to  watch 
the  Navy  batter  its  head  against  the  Narrows  and 
draw  off,  with  the  little  ships  huddled  round  the 
mined,  lop-sided  battleships.     Then  came  an  inter- 


M  O  N  S— G  ALLIPOLI  245 


lude  to  martial  music  in  Egypt,  when  Sir  Ian, 
thoroughly  attuned  to  the  historical  significance  of 
his  command,  took  the  salute  at  a  review  in  the 
sand  outside  Alexandria  and  went  home  to  write 
in  his  diary :  "  High,  high  soared  our  hopes. 
Jerusalem— Constantinople  ?  "  But  the  answer  to 
his  eager  question  was — Gallipoli. 

His  diary  is,  on  the  whole,  the  best  document 
that  has  come  out  of  the  war.     When  he  followed 
the   Japanese   in   Manchuria   as    a   mere   Military 
Attache,  he  managed  to  convey  more  of  the  meaning 
of  war  in  A  Staff  Officer's  Scrap  Book  than  any 
writer  on  it  since  Tolstoi ;  and  when  the  commander 
of  the  Mediterranean   Expeditionary   Force  turns 
its  historian,  he  writes  not  only  the  best  book  on 
the  war  but,  in  one  judgment,  the  best  book  on 
war.     His    Odyssey    (for,    hke    Odysseus,    Sir    Ian 
Hamilton   was   born   in  the   Ionian   Islands)   is   a 
brilliant    achievement.     He    has    a    keen    eye    for 
detail  and  a  vivid  historical  imagination  ;  and  his 
grasp  of  the  general  contours  of  the  wood  does  not 
disable  him  from  pointing  out  the  amusing  shape 
of  many   of  the   trees.      Indeed   it   is   the   vivid 
drawing  of  his   details   which   helps  to   burn  the 
whole  picture  into  one's  memory.     Lord  Kitchener 
at  his  desk  "  with  flashing  spectacles  " ;  the  conning- 
tower  of  the  Queen  Elizabeth  during  the  landing  on 
the  Peninsula  ;  those  awful  boats  off  Ocean  Beach 
("  Several  boats  are  stranded  along  this  no  man's 
land  ;    so  far  all  attempts  to  get  out  at  night  and 
bury  the  dead  have  only  led  to  fresh  losses.     No 
one  ever  landed  out  of  these  boats,  so  they  say  ")  ; 
and  the  night  sounds  at  sea  ("  Half  an  hour  the 
bombardment  and  counter-bombardment,  and  then 


246  IN      M  E  M  O  R  I  A  M 


there  arose  the  deadly  crepitation  of  small-arms 
—no  messages— ten  times  I  went  back  and  forward 
to  the  signal-room— no  messages— until  a  new  and 
dreadful  sound  was  carried  on  the  night  wind  out 
to  sea— the  sound  of  the  shock  of  whole  regiments— 
the  Turkish  Allah  Din !— our  answering  loud 
Hurrahs  ")— such  pictures  as  these  are  raw,  hving 
history  written  down  by  a  man  who  helped  to 
make  it.  The  literary  accomplishment  of  them 
may  scandalize  the  ilhterate  taciturnity  of  some  of 
our  conquerors.  But  Galhpoli  was  not  lost  because 
Sir  Ian  could  write  English :  one  should  never 
forget  that  Napoleon,  who  was  as  successful  as 
most  Sandhurst  soldiers,  talked  incessantly  from 
birth  and  produced  thirty-three  volumes  of  corre- 
spondence. 

The  history  of  the  affair  appears  pitiably  clear 
from  Sir  lan's  journal.  First,  the  soldiers  were 
put  in  to  watch  the  sailors  win.  Then  submarines 
thrust  their  grey  snouts  into  the  blue  waters  of  the 
Levant,  and  the  sailors,  their  skirts  tucked  tightly 
round  their  ankles,  stood  by  to  watch  the  soldiers 
win.  They  did  not  win  in  the  first  chapter,  because 
Sir  John  French  was  to  end  the  war  at  Loos  and 
required  for  that  purpose  the  entire  resources  of 
the  Empire.  They  did  not  win  in  the  second  chapter, 
because  Mr.  Lloyd  George  had  discovered  by  the 
aid  of  a  small-scale  map  that  the  war  was  to  be 
won  in  the  suburbs  of  Salonika,  and  the  Govern- 
ment diverted  to  the  aid  of  Serbia  the  men  who 
might  have  marched  into  Constantinople.  It  is  a 
queer  story  that  Sir  Ian  tells,  between  his  official 
correspondence  and  his  etchings  of  war.  In  his 
gracious  retrospect  Gallipoli,  for  all  the  horror  of 


M  O  N  S— G  ALLIPOLI  247 


its  failure  and  its  unburied  dead,  is  touched  with 
an  odd  quality  that  is  almost  charm,  drawn  from 
a  thousand  friendships  and  ten  thousand  sacrifices. 
"  How  sad  and  mad  and  bad  it  was— But  then, 
how  it  was  sweet  !  " 


RONALD    POULTON 


I  CAN  remember  Ronald  Poulton  (and  one  is  left 
now  with  memories  instead  of  friends)  in  his 
first  term  at  Rugby.  The  little  scene  was  set 
between  the  bare  trees  and  brick  walls  of  Caldecott's 
playing-field  on  a  half-holiday  afternoon  in  the 
late  autumn  of  1903.  One  can  almost  recover  the 
pleasurable  air  of  privileged  loafing  with  which 
one  celebrated  a  temporary  exemption  from  games, 
parading  the  six-foot  way  between  the  different 
grounds,  watching  the  gratifying  exertions  of  other 
people,  and  wearing  such  mufflers  and  overcoats 
as  almost  made  one  believe  in  the  failing  health  to 
which  one  owed  the  rest.  Some  one  who  was  well 
informed  about  the  School  House  (and  its  contents 
were  as  much  a  special  subject  as  the  Balkan 
races)  said  that  they  had  a  new  man  who  was  a 
fast  three-quarter.  He  gave  his  name,  and  pointed 
out  a  lean  boy  with  the  figure  of  a  ferret,  who 
detached  himself  for  an  instant  from  the  scramble 
of  Wliites  and  Stripes.  That  was  the  first  that 
some  of  us  saw  of  Ronald  Poulton. 

In  the  following  term  the  Sports  must  have 
lifted  him  out  of  the  ruck  of  little  boys  in  large 
collars,  and  people  began  to  know  his  name.  He 
rose  from  Caldecott's  to  Bigside   (I  suppose  that 

248 


RONALD       POULTON        249 

he  never  descended  with  most  of  us  to  Benn's),  and 
the  swerving  run  with  the  rigid,  down-stretched 
arms  moving  from  side  to  side  before  him  became 
as  famihar  as  the  flat  strike  of  the  School  clock. 
Out  of  games,  he  was  soon  lost  to  sight  in  the 
mysterious  region  of  the  Science  Specialists,  whom 
one  knew  only  as  a  confused  noise  in  the  Arnold 
Library.  The  School  House  of  those  days  (and  of 
these,  for  all  that  I  know)  made  almost  a  criminal 
offence  of  acquaintance  with  the  outside  world, 
so  that  one  was  not  permitted  to  know  him  until 
he  had  climbed  above  the  clouds  into  the  calm 
air  of  the  Sixth,  where  one  could  visit  other  people's 
houses  and  speak  to  them  without  the  fear  of 
prosecution.  Then  in  the  autumn  of  1907,  when 
he  and  Watson  were  double  Captains  of  the  XV 
like  the  two  kings  of  Sparta,  a  new  and  nervous 
Head  of  the  School  found  in  the  athletes  his  loyal 
and  indispensable  secular  arm.  Together  we  man- 
ipulated the  voting  of  Bigside  Levee,  that  singu- 
larly unmanageable  popular  assembly,  whose  decrees 
were  necessary  for  the  variation  of  a  hat  band  or 
the  purchase  of  a  Sports  cup.  One  appealed  to 
him  for  the  support  of  his  smile,  which  carried 
almost  more  votes  than  his  prestige,  and  of  the 
big  battalions  of  the  School  House  ;  and  in  return 
one  used  the  authority  of  the  Chair  to  get  him 
wholly  unjustifiable  adjournments  when  the  pros- 
pects of  a  division  on  his  motions  seemed  un- 
promising. There  was  a  particularly  sinister 
occasion  early  in  1908,  when  he  opposed  a  revo- 
lutionary proposal  "  that  members  of  the  Running 
VIII  in  their  second  year  be  permitted  to  wear  a 
white  straw  hat  "  ;    as  the  House  looked  friendly 


250  I  N       M  E  M  O  R  I  A  M 


to  the  proposal,  "  the  Chairman  adjourned  the 
Levee  without  putting  the  question,  in  view  of  the 
fact  that  only  a  small  proportion  of  the  Upper 
School  was  present  "  ;  and  a  more  carefully  con- 
stituted House  rejected  the  heresy  five  days  later. 
His  support  in  Sixth  Levee,  a  Second  Chamber 
with  a  deplorable  tendency  to  independence,  gave 
one  the  votes  of  distant  Specialists  and  remote 
inhabitants  of  the  Army  Class  ;  and  in  our  last 
year  it  saved  the  administration  from  defeat  on 
a  grave  proposal  that  some  one  should  suffer  for 
the  delightful  offence  of  reading  the  Second  Lesson 
in  batting-gloves  for  a  bet  of  two  shillings.  There 
was  also  assistance  rendered  in  other  directions  ; 
the  Upper  Bench  had  decided  to  vary  the  intol- 
erable calm  of  First  Lesson  with  an  alarm  clock, 
which  was  to  be  set  for  7.25  a.m.  and  placed  in  the 
little  gallery  round  Old  Sixth  School.  As  the 
Upper  Bench,  a  grave  assembly  of  Heads  of  Houses 
and  scholars  elect  of  half  a  dozen  Colleges,  wished 
to  swear  by  the  card  that  they  had  not  done  it 
themselves,  Poulton  was  brought  in  from  the 
Specialists  after  early  Chapel  and  persuaded  to  lay 
the  mine.  It  exploded  to  time  ;  but  the  results, 
on  balance,  were  disappointing. 

He  seems,  as  one  turns  over  memories,  to  have 
been  everywhere  in  those  days.  One  sees  him  in 
the  winter,  swerving  up  Bigside  to  score  a  try,  as 
the  droning  chant  of  "  School  "  jumped  into  the 
major  key,  and  the  crowd  strained  forward  against 
the  line  of  beating  canes  to  follow  his  run  up  the 
ground ;  one  sees  him  in  the  summer,  smiling 
through  cricket  ''  foreigns,"  which  one  came  out  of 
Third  Lesson  to  look  at,  and  in  the  snowy  spring- 


RONALD       POULTON        251 

time  of  the  Sports,  sprinting  inimitably  or  helping 
a  nervous  fellow-steward  to  adjust  the  insidious 
complications  of  the  School  revolver.  He  appears 
in  light  blue  cricket  caps,  in  tasselled  football 
caps  with  the  lining  sewn  full  of  the  names  of 
stricken  fields,  in  hat  bands  of  every  imaginable 
colour  and  distinction,  playing  steward  at  School 
concerts  at  the  end  of  Term  in  the  statutory 
button-hole  which  fags  brought  up  in  state  from 
the  florist's  in  High  Street,  and  even  lecturing 
to  the  Natural  History  Society  (whose  principal 
interest  was  the  ecclesiastical  architecture  of  War- 
wickshire in  its  relation  to  illicit  smoking)  on  the 
Roman  Wall,  which  he  had  learnt  in  the  holidays 
with  a  friend  among  the  House-Masters.  He  was  in 
every  picture  ;  but  no  one  could  ever  persuade  him 
to  stand  in  the  centre  of  it. 


II 

Oxford,  which  began  for  most  of  us  with  a  dis- 
piriting week  of  scholarship  papers  at  the  end  of 
an  autumn  term,  was  not  a  new  land  for  him,  as 
he  had  a  home  and  his  "  last  school  "  there.  But 
he  sat  for  the  examination  at  the  long  tables  in 
Balliol  Hall,  scrambled  with  the  rest  of  us  for 
that  queer  afternoon  tea,  which  the  Master  and 
Fellows  gave  one  as  a  sedative  with  the  papers, 
and  went  back  to  Rugby  with  the  Science  Exhib- 
ition that  he  had  come  to  fetch. 

When  he  came  up  in  1908,  he  went  into  ground- 
floor  rooms  in  the  Garden  Quad,  which  were  known 
to  historians  to  lie  near  the  Dean's  forcing-house 
of  First  Classes,  and  were  believed  by  explorers  to 


252  IN       M  E  M  O  R  I  A  M 

be  on  the  way  to  the  Laboratory.  It  was  the 
custom  of  those  days  (I  am  speaking  of  the  reign 
of  Edward  VII)  for  men  of  the  same  year  to  lunch 
in  groups.  As  there  was  a  singularly  unwholesome 
tradition  that  lunch  was  a  meal  consisting  of 
marmalade  and  cigarettes,  conversation  was  the 
staple  article  of  diet,  and  the  selection  of  one's 
companions  became  a  matter  of  more  importance 
than  the  choice  of  dishes.  For  a  year  he  lunched 
with  a  big  dark  man  from  Rossall  who  talked,  a 
round  fair  man  from  Repton  who  smiled,  and 
another  Rugbeian  from  the  Front  Quad  who  made 
speeches.  There  was  a  rule  at  that  table  that  no 
one  should  talk  any  one  else's  "  shop  "  ;  one  was 
not  permitted  to  know  or  to  show  that  one  knew 
that  he  was  being  tried  (it  was  a  remote  age)  for 
the  University,  or  that  the  Union  was  debating 
Mr.  Asquith's  proposals  to  abolish  unemployment 
(it  was  a  very  remote  age)  by  the  promiscuous 
engagement  of  supernumerary  postmen.  The  sole 
intrusion  of  athletics  was  an  occasion  on  which  the 
other  Rugbeian  was  caught  for  a  College  Littleside 
and  found  himself  without  a  striped  jersey  ;  he 
appealed  for  Ronald's  and  made  a  short  but  striking 
appearance  on  the  Master's  Field  in  the  red  and 
white  stripes  of  the  School  House  with  a  sinister 
black  skull  and  cross-bones  on  the  left  breast,  a 
singularly  harrowing  experience  for  a  nature  which, 
on  the  football  field  at  least,  was  always  retiring. 

Ronald  was  always  (it  explains  his  one  hostility 
and  a  good  proportion  of  his  friendships)  a  Rug- 
beian. There  was  a  dinner  to  an  old  Head-master 
and  a  tea  to  a  new  one  whilst  he  was  at  Oxford, 
in  which  he  was  inevitably  prominent ;  and  I  think 


RONALD       POULTON        253 


that  a  newly-elected  President  of  the  Union  was 
never  so  proud  as  when  a  canvasser  (canvassing 
was  strictly  prohibited)  reported  ruefully  that 
Ronald,  on  being  reminded  of  a  Rugbeian  candi- 
dature, had  almost  killed  him  for  the  suggestion 
that  he  could  possibly  have  forgotten  it. 

Ill 

I  think  that  he  was  the  most  honest  man  I  ever 
knew.  If  he  had  wished  to  pretend,  he  would  not 
have  known  how  to  do  it,  and  there  was  no 
affectation  in  him.  He  played  games  without 
panache  and  worked  without  false  solemnity.  Some 
of  us  have  hoped  that  he  was  typical  of  a  single 
school ;  but  we  were  wrong,  because  the  best  is 
never  typical. 

He  was  (it  is  useless  to  try  to  sketch  him  with 
a  pen,  and  one  is  writing  for  the  people  who  remem- 
ber) himself ;  and  there  is  a  smile  and  a  voice  and  a 
friend  that  some  of  them  will  never  forget.  There 
was  a  facetious  undergraduate  wrote  of  him  eight 
years  ago  :  "  He  has  played  for  England  against 
France,  Ireland,  and  Scotland  :  as  he  is  a  member 
of  the  O.T.C.,  we  trust  he  will  never  be  required 
for  his  country  against  Germany."  It  is  of  no  use 
to  wish  that  wish  now. 


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